SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS by Marisha Pessl: Read This If

How could you not be compelled to pick up a novel entitled Special Topics in Calamity Physics? That's definitely what first peaked my interest. STCP (I seem to have a strong penchant for acronymizing all long titles lately, for brevity's sake, of which, of course, I've just defeated the purpose with this wickedly long parenthetical) by Marisha Pessl is one of the cleverest books I've read in a while, which both bolstered and hindered my overall enjoyment of the story. Sometimes the cleverness just took on a life - and trajectory - of its own, wandering through mazes of tangential paths of wit and whimsy without a a mere thought of finding its way back to a narrative flow.

It must be noted that I listened to the audio for this one, which was delightfully performed by Emily Janice Card - she managed to breathe much life into the (often annotated) asides and clever comparisons that conspicuously peppered the narrative, but obviously, that makes it hard to skim over the (what some might consider) somewhat superfluous text, and even if I had been reading with my eyes and not my ears, such skimming would lead to confusion because sandwiched in the middle of the random book titles and oddball similes, an important plot point inevitably could be found.

This is not to say that I did not enjoy the story - I did, in fact, in the end, appreciate much of what amused me in the beginning and annoyed me in the middle. Blue van Meer made for quite the quirky, smartypants heroine, with an equally quirky upbringing and smartypants father. After moving around the country every semester or two, they settle - for a whole 8 months - in a small town in North Carolina for Blue's senior year, where she is thrust unwittingly and unwillingly into a strange group of misfits (she - or the entire population of the school - calls them the Bluebloods) by an idiosyncratic teacher she meets in the grocery store. Many of the eccentricities later come into play after a series of mysterious events culminate in Part 3 - the partial wrapping together of these elements without tying them together with a neat little bow more than made up for the meandering nature of Parts 1 and 2.

You really should check out STCP if:

• You've been longing for a story of the high school experience told with the nuance and insight of a John Hughes movie.
• You like a little mystery to go with your high school shenanigans.
• You don't mind a book that sticks the song "Somebody's Watching Me" in your head on autorepeat.
• You like clever. No, you lurvvve clever.
• You like big books and you cannot lie.
• You want to torture or confound (or spark much discussion in) your book club.

You should take a pass on STCP if:

• You're not a fan of lots of references you may or may not get.
• You like your plots to move quickly, without fluff.
• You really do need your plots wrapped together in the end with a shiny bow, no crinkles or loose threads to speak of. 
• You value brevity over feats of literary (and often long-winded) wit.
• You have the attention span of a gnat.

If anyone's read this & feels like discussing at all, let me know. It's definitely a discussion-worthy one. 

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan: Impressions

If ever there was a book for book and tech geeks alike, this is probably it. Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan follows an out-of-work web designer turned book clerk into a mysterious world filled with cloaked figures and coded texts and ancient artifacts clashing with modern technologies and code-cracking capabilities. It's a laid-back read, if ever there was one, with more caricature characters than fully fleshed out figures, but hey, it's plot driven, and that's okay with me. It's sort of a more modern, nerdier Indiana Jones-esque story. 

Read this if: 

• You proudly call yourself a book nerd or geek or similar term of choice.
• You don't know what you'd do without google or the internet or the latest gadget.
• Your favorite song is by a band I haven't heard of because I'm over 30. Or you're over 30 too but were born a decade too early or too late.
• You're looking for a fun, fast read. 
• You enjoyed both the Indiana Jones movies and Snowcrash.

Don't read this if: 

• You're serious and cranky and cantankerous.
• You don't have nor do you want a smartphone or tablet.
• You prefer character-driven novels.
• You think San Francisco and New York breed the roots of all evil.
• You're not into that whole suspension of disbelief thing.

PS: even my kitty wants to read it.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides: Impressions

Although I enjoyed The Marriage Plot overall, ultimately it fell short of realizing its potential. Eugenides is no doubt a talented author, and clearly does not rush anything to publication, having only published 3 novels in almost 20 years, but this could possibly have done with a little extra tweaking. 

This book has been out for a few months, so I'll try to keep the synopsis short. The love triangle plot revolves around three Brown graduates, focusing on the year or so following their graduation in June, 1982. Mitchell, the author in thinly veiled fictional form, is an awkward Greek boy from Detroit, obsessed with religion and with a girl named Madeleine. Madeleine is a bibliophilist English major, struggling with the semiotic interpretation of literature, particularly with the plot type centering on the marriage of its main characters, most popular in 18th & early 19th century lit. She's of Greek heritage and a privileged background, and is obsessed with Leonard. Leonard is supposed to be of more modest roots, from Portland, OR, and is wicked smart and bi-polar. Leonard is not obsessed with Mitchell and kind of likes Madeleine. 

I'll start with the virtues. Eugenides deftly captures all the emotional turmoil of transitioning from teenager child to young adult sent out into the "real" world. Everyone feels everything with vivid acuteness. Break-ups are earth-shattering, even if the relationship was a mere three months long. Everyone is afraid of rejection, though they all face a fair amount of it. The reader keenly feels every self-conscious apprehension. At one point, Madeleine becomes suddenly self-conscious when having a conversation with Leonard that isn't going so well: 

The conversation lapsed. And suddenly, to her surprise, Madeleine was flooded with panic. She felt the silence like a judgment against her. At the same time, her anxiety about the silence made it harder to speak. 

(This is a scenario to which I can definitely relate - my now spouse can attest to that.) Their joys are also intensely felt, and I enjoyed the poser-ish ways of college students brought to light, the unfounded self-assuredness flaunted to mask secret insecurities, the bookshelves lined with appropriately intellectual books, the patronizing combativeness that passes as flirting, etc. And the state of things at the end of the book was ultimately satisfying. 

Now, the vices. Madeleine is supposed to be a liberal, feminist character, but she spends most of the novel in reactive instead of active mode (even in the end, which took away from the otherwise satisfying ending). Her thesis is in part titled Some Thoughts on the Marriage Plot, but we never find out what those thoughts actually are. She is a grown woman who calls her father "Daddy." Is it just me that finds that weird and creepy? Mitchell, for most of the novel, is suffering his unrequited love for Madeleine, and is on a spiritual journey or mission of sorts. But his journey seems to be dismissed in the end. Leonard is mostly trying to deal with his bi-polar-ness, and we only get a glimpse into his story for one section, past the middle of the novel. 

The story is ultimately about finding oneself, or coming to some hard-earned conclusions about one's place in the world, and in that it succeeds, at least in part. The characters were interesting and relatable, and mostly likeable. It was a worthwhile read overall, as long as you can accept some of the elements that don't quite work.

My Sense of The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes is a very short novel, more of a novella at only 163 pages, that has appeared on list after list after list of 2011 Best Books of the Year.  I didn't know much about this book, but since it won the Man Booker prize, was short, was about memory and perception, and became available at the library, I decided to give it a go. The novella tells the story of Tony Webster, a 60ish man reflecting back on time spent and interactions with his college girlfriend Veronica and genius childhood friend Adrian.

It's actually almost impossible to go into what I didn't like about the book without spoiling it for anyone who wants to read it. While the novel's musings about our memory's handling of time and our own life histories are infinitely quotable, the plot meanders about through the lives of a few rather unlikeable characters with little emotion or personality behind them, other than the caricatures they are made out to be. The plot is more a vehicle for the quotable (and highly insightful) musings than a story well-told. Don't get me wrong - the novella is beautifully written, and this would not cause me to rule out reading more Barnes' works. But Veronica's cryptic dialogue & her lack of any redeeming traits did make me wonder if Barnes thinks women are, as Tony's ex-wife put it, easily categorized into two camps: "those with clear edges to them, and those who implied mystery." Veronica, of course, was supposed to be in the latter camp.

I did enjoy and agree with many of the musings about life, and how our memories are dynamic as opposed to static - self-editing over time, how we can feel one way about our pasts one moment, then look at it through another lens & our opinion of it completely changes. Here are a few of those quotes I was talking about:

I'd read somewhere that if you want to make people pay attention to what you're saying, you don't raise your voice but lower it: this is what really commands attention.

We live with such easy assumptions, don't we? For instance, that memory equals events plus time. But it's all much odder than this. Who was it said that memory is what we thought we'd forgotten? And it out to be obvious to us that time doesn't act as a fixative, rather as a solvent. But it's not convenient--it's not useful--to believe this; it doesn't help us get on with our lives, so we ignore it.

In my terms, I settled for the realities of life, and submitted to its necessities: if this, then that, and so the years passed. In Adrian's terms, I gave up on life, gave up on examining it, took it as it came. And so, for the first time, I began to feel a more general remorse--a feeling somewhere between self-pity and self-hatred--about my whole life. All of it. I had lost the friends of my youth. I had lost the love of my wife. I had abandoned the ambitions I had entertained. I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded--and how pitiful that was.

When you are in your twenties, even if you're confused and uncertain about your aims and purposes, you have a strong sense of what life itself is, and of what you in life are, and might become. Later ... later there is more uncertainty, more overlapping, more backtracking, more false memories. Back then, you can remember your short life in its entirety. Later, the memory becomes a thing of shreds and patches. It's a bit like the black box aeroplanes carry to record what happens in a crash. If nothing goes wrong, the tape erases itself. So if you do crash, it's obvious why you did; if you don't, then the log of your journey is much less clear.  

 So, yes, insightful and quotable. But as for the story itself, Veronica was constantly telling Tony: "You just don't get it, do you? You never did, and you never will." That's probably true about me and the plot of this novella. Or, I understood the overall purpose, but found the story a weak delivery vehicle.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern: Impressions

After reading that The Night Circus failed to live up to Beth and Carrie's expectations from the considerable hype, I was less excited to read this novel. I waited patiently until it came up in the library queue, and when it did, I picked it up out of mild (instead of burning) curiosity. Because my hopes had been dampened, I may have enjoyed this book much more than had I read it a couple months earlier. A short synopsis, as this is likely the 1387th review you've seen on this book:

• Setting: An enchanting, entirely black and white circus, open only at night, that travels without notice - one never knows when or where it will show up or how long it will stay. 
• Plot: two young children are chosen to compete in a mysterious duel of magic and illusion, a competition for which they train throughout their childhood, and once begun lasts years with no clear rules or stakes or end. 
• Themes: chaos vs. order and control, innate vs. learned ability, illusion vs. reality, time and timing - fate vs free will.

If you prefer character-based novels, be forewarned: The Night Circus is almost entirely plot and setting driven, the characters merely outlines of chess pieces (I steal that comparison directly from the book), fleshed out only so much as necessary to move the story forward. Think Agatha Christie, with magic but no murder to solve - each character with an identifying characteristic to keep them straight (the tattooed contortionist, the farmer's son, the fortune-teller, the stylish former ballerina, the clockmaker, etc.). The character's special abilities are much more central to the tale than their personalities, which, as has been mentioned, were somewhat flat. All were defined by their skills and principles. I didn't actually mind this at all while reading - I was entirely riveted by the atmosphere Morgenstern deftly created. Her descriptions of this enchanting world brought the circus to life as if a Tim Burton film was playing in my head. 

The love story aspect more difficult to accept unless thought of in fairy tale terms - fairy tale romances are rarely based on much of substance, but mostly on whimsical fancy, and this is no exception, which was not an issue for me since the story was not first or foremost a romance, but more of a fable about what is under one's control and what is not, and the blurred lines between dreamlike illusions and reality - what is reality, after all, but what we choose to believe it to be.

Thematic quotes:

People see what they wish to see. And in most cases, what they are told to see.

This is not magic. This is the way the world is, only very few people take the time to stop and note it.

Someone needs to tell those tales. When the battles are fought and won and lost, when the pirates find their treasures and the dragons eat their foes for breakfast with a nice cup of Lapsang souchong, someone needs to tell their bits of overlapping narrative. There's magic in that. It's in the listener, and for each and every ear it will be different, and it will affect them in ways they can never predict.

Overall, I found this to be an incredibly enjoyable and captivating read, making me wish such a whimsical circus would appear randomly in my town, just to get a taste of the impossible even if for only a moment.