All That is Solid Melts Into Air

Russia, 1986. On a run-down apartment block in Moscow, a nine-year-old prodigy plays his piano silently for fear of disturbing the neighbors. In a factory on the outskirts of the city, his aunt makes car parts, hiding her dissident past. In a nearby hospital, a surgeon immerses himself in his work, avoiding his failed marriage.

And in a village in Belarus, a teenage boy wakes to a sky of the deepest crimson. Outside, the ears of his neighbor's cattle are dripping blood. Ten miles away, at the Chernobyl Power Plant, something unimaginable has happened.Now their lives will change forever.

An end-of-empire novel charting the collapse of the Soviet Union, All That Is Solid Melts into Air is a gripping and epic love story by a major new talent.

I was eight when news about Chernobyl broke.  I remember maps of the "cloud" that threatened to disperse deadly radiation via a wind from the Soviet Union.  The news did its level best to scare the pants off of pretty much everyone.

What fear we felt here in the US was a mere speck compared to the terror those in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union went through where danger existed from both radiation and government mis-information.  Darragh McKeon has brought that world to life with characters both near to and far from the accident at Chernobyl.  At first, nothing seems wrong.  People go to work, boys practice the piano, fathers and sons go hunting.  And then, the world around Chernobyl begins to change, physically.  The writing is atmospheric - not "atmospheric" as in this-is-a-word-found-in-a-blurb but truly evocative of an area of the world so impacted by man-made radiation and fall-out that it cannot belong to our normal frame of reference.  The forest doesn't just shrivel and die; it cycles through an incredible sequence of colors.  The horrific way the human body reacts to differing levels of radiation, melting down in unheard-of ways.

Each of the main characters - Grigory the surgeon, Maria the factory worker, Alina her sister, Zhenya the piano prodigy, and Artyom a boy from a village near Chernobyl - has a meltdown during the novel as they fight against restraints, the lack of information, the lack of freedom, the lack of transparency.  McKeon follows his characters as they live beyond the immediate aftermath of the accident with just one unraveled thread escaped from the neat bow.

The level of research and detail provided by McKeon paints a chilling picture of a governmental regime trapped within its own rhetoric, slowly spiraling toward dissolution. Don't ask questions, don't poke around, keep your head down and don't think for yourself.  The most horrific scene presents early in the novel in the form of an emergency manual with all relevant information blacked out; belief in the system is so great that even the idea of disaster preparedness is anathema.  Even though the accident at Chernobyl is nearly 30 years in the past many parallels can be drawn to events in the 2010s.

All That is Solid Melts Into Air is one of the best books I've read in 2014.  An excellent debut.

Dear FTC: I received a DRC of this novel from the publisher via Edelweiss.

How to Lose a Duke in Ten Days by Laura Lee Guhrke (An American Heiress in London #2)

From USA Today bestselling author Laura Lee Guhrke comes the story of a bargain, a marriage of convenience...and the chance for love to last a lifetime.

They had a deal...

From the moment she met the devil-may-care Duke of Margrave, Edie knew he could change her life. And when he agreed to her outrageous proposal of a marriage of convenience, she was transformed from ruined American heiress to English duchess. Five years later, she's delighted with their arrangement, especially since her husband is living on another continent.

But deals are made to be broken...

By marrying an heiress, Stuart was able to pay his family's enormous debts, and Edie's terms that he leave England forever seemed a small price to pay. But when a brush with death impels him home, he decides it's time for a real marriage with his luscious American bride, and he proposes a bold new bargain: ten days to win her willing kiss. But is ten days enough to win her heart?

Edie Jewell - an American heiress - has made the ultimate marriage of convenience: she'll pay her husband's debts and competently manage the duchy as long as he returns to Africa and never asks her to consummate the marriage.  Margrave, unfortunately, returns five years later haunted by a near-fatal lion attack determined to become a responsible duke with a wife by his side.  Their agreement is broken and Edie prepares to return to New York but Margrave persuades her to give him ten days to change her mind.

What makes this convenience-to-love romance so good is the time Guhrke takes to build trust between Edie and Margrave.  Edie exhibits PTSD symptoms (we are not left in the dark long before we understand why) and the care Margrave takes to ask her about triggers, what makes her more comfortable versus less comfortable, etc. makes the resolution of their love story so much sweeter.  A very lovely story.  I look forward to future installments in this series.

It Takes a Scandal by Caroline Linden (Scandalous #2)

Summary from Goodreads:
Sometimes It Takes a Scandal...

Abigail Weston has everything: beauty, wit, and one of the largest dowries in England. Her parents hope she'll wed an earl. Abigail hopes for a man who wants her desperately and passionately. But the money seems to blind every man she meets—except one.

Sebastian Vane has nothing. He came home from war with a shattered leg to find his father mad and his inheritance gone. He's not a fit suitor for anyone, let alone an heiress. But Abigail lights up his world like a comet, bright and beautiful and able to see him instead of his ruined reputation. And it might end happily ever after...

To Reveal Your Heart's Desire

...Until Benedict Lennox begins courting Abigail. Ben is everything Sebastian isn't—wealthy, charming, heir to an earl. Sebastian won't give up the only girl he's ever loved without a fight, but Abigail must choose between the penniless gentleman who moves her heart, and the suitor who is everything her parents want.

Abigail Weston (and her sister Penelope, who has an upcoming book) was introduced in the previous book, Love and Other Scandals.  She has an enviable dowry but her father is a Cit - catching a titled man but not a fortune hunter is tricky.  However, now that the family has moved to Richmond - next door to a wealthy earl with an eligible son - it seems Abigail might make a desirable ton marriage.

But their other neighbor is the supposedly disreputable Sebastian Vane.  His mad father (not a euphemism, the father was actually mentally unstable) lost (read: was cheated by the earl) the majority of the family estate, then went missing under questionable circumstances, and now a sum of money is missing from the earl's estate.  At best, Sebastian is an injured, angry ex-soldier.  At worst, he's a thief and patricide.  And Abigail can't stay away.

I really liked this second installment in Linden's Scandalous series.  The "50 Ways to Sin" pamphlets continue to scandalize everyone.  Abigail is very sweet and plucky, a perfect foil to Sebastian's barely contained rage.  The grotto scenes were excellent.  I loved the seeds sown between Lennox and Penelope for the next book and the conflict between Sebastian and Lennox who used to be friends felt very real.  My only disappointment came in how ready Abigail seemed (for a little while at least) to put up with the earl's clearly malevolent personality to allow Lennox to court her.

Saga, Volume 3

Summary from Goodreads:
From the Hugo Award-winning duo of Brian K. Vaughan (The Private Eye, Y: The Last Man) and Fiona Staples (North 40, Red Sonja), Saga is the sweeping tale of one young family fighting to find their place in the universe. Searching for their literary hero, new parents Marko and Alana travel to a cosmic lighthouse on the planet Quietus, while the couple's multiple pursuers finally close in on their targets.

Collects issues 13-18.

The third Saga trade volume!!  This arc doesn't move through the galaxy with the same sweep as the first two trades but it makes the world so much richer.

Poor Lying Cat - your abilities get confusing when the humans are hallucinating.

Dear FTC: I purchased my copy of this book.

The Ashford Affair

Summary from Goodreads:
New York Times bestselling author Lauren Willig "spins a web of lust, power and loss" (Kate Alcott) that is by turns epic and intimate, transporting and page-turning

As a lawyer in a large Manhattan firm, just shy of making partner, Clementine Evans has finally achieved almost everything she’s been working towards—but now she’s not sure it’s enough. Her long hours have led to a broken engagement and, suddenly single at thirty-four, she feels her messy life crumbling around her. But when the family gathers for her grandmother Addie’s ninety-ninth birthday, a relative lets slip hints about a long-buried family secret, leading Clemmie on a journey into the past that could change everything. . . .

What follows is a potent story that spans generations and continents, bringing an Out of Africa feel to a Downton Abbey cast of unforgettable characters. From the inner circles of WWI-era British society to the skyscrapers of Manhattan and the red-dirt hills of Kenya, the never-told secrets of a woman and a family unfurl.

I am a huge fan of Lauren Willig's Pink Carnation series and was really excited to read her first stand-alone, non-Pink novel.  But about half-way through the first chapter I put it down.  I wasn't enthused by the characters for some reason.  However, it has been staring at me from the corner of my dresser since then so I picked it back up for Readathon.

I was immediately sucked into Clemmie's family and the mystery surrounding her Grandma Addie.  Such a rich world created in post-World War I Britain and Kenya and end-of-the-20th century New York City.  Granted, I did guess the Big Family Secret but that is only half of the plot.  Pink fans should be on the lookout for a Vaughn descendant that slipped into the Kenya storyline.  Definitely a novel to recommend for fans of Downton Abbey.

Dear FTC: I purchased my copy of this book.

The Phantom Tollbooth

Summary from Goodreads:
Milo mopes in black ink sketches, until he assembles a tollbooth and drives through. He jumps to the island of Conclusions. But brothers King Azaz of Dictionopolis and the Mathemagician of Digitopolis war over words and numbers. Joined by ticking watchdog Tock and adult-size Humbug, Milo rescues the Princesses of Rhyme and Reason, and learns to enjoy life.

Poor Milo, stuck in the Dolldrums. I remember having this read to me in grade school yet never read a copy on my own. So I decided to re-read it during the Readathon.

Just as wonderful as I remembered. And far more complicated and intricate in vocabulary and plot (how did this not win a Newbery Medal?). Either I wasn't paying attention or it's the perfect read-aloud.  It was the perfect Readathon read.  My edition had a lovely preface by Maurice Sendak, which seemed especially timely.

FTC: I read a strip of this book that I got through work.

Dewey's #readathon Spring 2014: That's a wrap!

It is the readathon finish line. Finally.

Since I got started three hours late (7am on Saturday is like the worst and it took forever just to get the motor going, even with coffee) I read a little bit more today from my official readathon list.

Yup. 1464 pages read, a little over 12 hours total.  6.2 books (Darragh McKeon's All That is Solid Melts Into Air I only started; probably going to break my heart).  I used the Bluefire app on my iPad to read the Linden, Gurhke, and McKeon; it works out really well, reads quickly, and the formatting on the HarperCollins DRCs is really nice.

How well did readathon go this year? Well, about 130am (hour 16?) was pretty daunting since it was about then that I developed massive indigestion stemming from what was likely the ingredients in Snyder's of Hanover's cheddar cheese pretzel bits (note to self: all processed cheesy-type food products are usually hell for you during readathon [cf. generic frozen garlic pizza with extra cheese, dodgy frozen lobster bites); stick with the trail mix, dried strawberries, fruit, and brownies).  I made it through to finishing my book but then decided it was simply time to go to bed and sleep it off.  So I did a little make-up reading this afternoon to make up for the late start and my ornery stomach, only lawnmowing and the weather (boy did we have a storm) intervened so I wasn't able to read as much as I would have liked.

Thank you, everyone who cheered and read and otherwise commented, rec'd books, etc on posts during readathon and, as always MANY MANY heaps of thanks and gratitude to Heather and Andi because readathon wouldn't be such a great thing if they didn't work so darned hard.

Sex Criminals, Volume One: One Weird Trick

Summary from Goodreads:
Suzie’s just a regular gal with an irregular gift: when she has sex, she stops time. One day she meets Jon and it turns out he has the same ability. And sooner or later they get around to using their gifts to do what we’d ALL do: rob a couple banks. A bawdy and brazen sex comedy for comics begins here!

By Matt Fraction (Satellite Sam, Hawkeye) and Chip Zdarsky (Prison Funnies, Monster Cops).

Named one of Time Magazine's top 10 graphic novels for 2013.

Collects SEX CRIMINALS #1-5.

The Sex Criminals Vol 1 trade is out.  I've already reviewed issues 1-5, which are included here, so what are you waiting for??

Get thee to a store and buy it already!

Dear FTC: I purchased my copy of this book.

Dewey's #readathon Spring 2014: Off we go!

So it is 7am (yawn) and IT'S TIME FOR READATHON!!!!!

I programmed the coffee-maker - it's brewing up Red Velvet Archer Farms coffee as I stumble out into the kitchen.

It's also Saturday.  At 7am.  Ack. But I have brownies.

And a stack of books:

Nook - American Gods
The Whipping Boy
The Door in the Wall
The Phantom Tollbooth
The Go-Between
Fanny Hill
Landline
The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century Poetry
The Age of Miracles (half-read)
The Ashford Affair (half-read)
Tampa (half-read)
Sex Criminals
Saga, Vol 3
Hawkeye: Little Hits
Bluefire app on iPad - The Truth About the Henry Quebert Affair, All That is Solid Melts Into Air, How to Lose a Duke in Ten Days, and It Takes a Scandal (I have four DRCs expiring in a week, eep)

A little combination of review reading, Newbery Project Reading, Overdue Reads Project reading, half-finished reading, and hella-awesome graphic novels reading.

Now, time for some shut-eye because the cats are doing that saddest-cat-ever-because-no-attention-for-meeeeee thing:

MFA vs. NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction

Summary from Goodreads:
Writers write—but what do they do for money? In a widely read essay entitled “MFA vs NYC,” bestselling novelist Chad Harbach (The Art of Fielding) argued that the American literary scene has split into two cultures: New York publishing versus university MFA programs. This book brings together established writers, MFA professors and students, and New York editors, publicists, and agents to talk about these overlapping worlds, and the ways writers make (or fail to make) a living within them. Should you seek an advanced degree, or will workshops smother your style? Do you need to move to New York, or will the high cost of living undo you? What’s worse—having a day job or not having health insurance? How do agents decide what to represent? Will Big Publishing survive? How has the rise of MFA programs affected American fiction? The expert contributors, including George Saunders, Elif Batuman, and Fredric Jameson, consider all these questions and more, with humor and rigor. MFA vs NYC is a must-read for aspiring writers, and for anyone interested in the present and future of American letters.

I didn't read the original essay "MFA vs NYC" when it pubbed on n+1 in 2010 (I was selling a house, OK, it was a huge pain).  When n+1/faber listed the essay collection Harbach edited to round out the MFA vs NYC debate, I was intrigued.  I mean, I can throw launch from a very large slingshot a stone across the Iowa River from my office and hit Dey House, home of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and one of my bosses is on the board of the Examined Life journal (a lit journal for people in the medical field).  It's MFA territory up in here a lot.  I was seduced into buying MFA vs NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction because of the pretty, pretty cover that stood out among all the other essay collections.  And it matched my sweater.  Yes, I know I'm a weirdo.

This is a good collection.  You get a little bit of MFA history, some personal essays that refute the MFA-programs-have-a-flattening-effect-on-writing, and one that posits that does actually happen.  Some writers had good NYC experiences, some not so great, the agent who sold Alissa Nutting's Tampa talks about how he got where he is now, and there's an insider-baseball look at the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.  There's even a David Foster Wallace essay that reminds us, once again, that depression is the worst and takes away some of our best creative people.  And someone made me really confused with a line about JFranz detractors whose idea of good literature is German film.  Huh?  The essays don't resolve the MFA vs NYC debate one way or another.  Did they really need to?  (For an essay-by-essay rundown, complete with grades, Kit Steinkellner did a great job on the Book Riot site.)

What really got me, though, was Harbach's original essay because on the first read-through I was ready to swear he was having one over on us.  No one else was seeing this, possibly chalk one up to sleep deprivation, so I settled in with a different color pen to prove/fail to prove the theory that Harbach was funning us with his MFA vs NYC essay (I actually wrote that as my "thesis" at the start of the essay, my inner scientist never takes a break).

In the end, I have to conclude that Harbach isn't pulling our legs but he is very clever and droll.  I think his tone stems from an interesting omission.  In the course of the "MFA vs NYC" essay Harbach does not disclose that he does, in fact, have an MFA.  From the University of Virginia.  Perhaps it was assumed readers of n+1 in 2010 would already know that and that they might also know that he had just sold his first novel for six figures (The Art of Fielding would come out in September 2011 and take off like a shot), giving him a bit of experience with the NYC side of the divide as well.  His experience allows him to poke fun at both experiences:

• In referring to MFA programs as a subject of self-satire, he mentions a DFW essay, "Francine Prose's Blue Angel, [and] that movie with the Belle & Sebastian soundtrack."
• An MFA teacher-as-writer wants to be an outsider "lobbing his flaming bags of prose over the ivied gate" yet "in the morning puts on a tie and walks through the gate and goes to his office."
• In describing the spread of MFA programs across the country Harbach calls out "a kind of wormhole at the center, in Iowa City, into which one can step and reappear at the New Yorker offices on 42nd street." [Looks around - nope, still in Iowa]
• Summertime workshops are "picturesque make-out camps."
• The short story focus in MFA programs "may seem like collective suicide, because everyone knows that no one reads short stories." [This statement seems a off now that multiple story collections have recently sold well.]
• No one in NYC knows of canonical MFA writer Stuart Dybek vs no one in an MFA program will care about a new Gary Shteyngart novel 
• The English department American literature canon consists only of Toni Morrison and the MFA canon "keeps alive the reputation of great..., near-great..., and merely excellent writers whom publishing has long since passed by." [ouch]
• NYC writers live in a specific part of Brooklyn bounded by DUMBO and Prospect Heights.

The NYC tone was less playful, making me wonder if subbing his manuscript to the NYC publishing scene had not been initially going well.  I also thought it was interesting some of the examples of MFA/NYC crossover writer-teachers who were not mentioned - Lorrie Moore, Aimee Bender, Marilynne Robinson, Lan Samantha Chang, Karen Russell - who have had success with both novels and short stories.  Obviously, Harbach couldn't have included every author ever, the essay would have just been a very long list, but more examples of authors who successfully work and live in the middle of the NYC/MFA divide would have been a good contrast to those who seem more either/or.  (And then there are the very successful authors - looking at Eloisa James and Co. - who have tenured academic positions not in writing programs and still sell a load of novels; do they fall into the NYC side?)

So, thesis = not proven.  

The Trip to Echo Spring

Summary from Goodreads:
Why is it that some of the greatest works of literature have been produced by writers in the grip of alcoholism, an addiction that cost them personal happiness and caused harm to those who loved them? In The Trip to Echo Spring, Olivia Laing examines the link between creativity and alcohol through the work and lives of six extraordinary men: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever and Raymond Carver.

All six of these writers were alcoholics, and the subject of drinking surfaces in some of their finest work, from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to A Moveable Feast. Often they did their drinking together - Hemingway and Fitzgerald ricocheting through the cafés of 1920s Paris; Carver and Cheever speeding to the liquor store in Iowa in the icy winter of 1973.

Olivia Laing grew up in an alcoholic family herself. One spring, wanting to make sense of this ferocious, entangling disease, she took a journey across America that plunged her into the heart of these overlapping lives. As she travels from Cheever's New York to Williams' New Orleans, from Hemingway's Key West to Carver's Port Angeles, she pieces together a topographical map of alcoholism, from the horrors of addiction to the miraculous possibilities of recovery. Beautiful, captivating and original, The Trip to Echo Spring strips away the myth of the alcoholic writer to reveal the terrible price creativity can exert.

On the very first page of The Trip to Echo Spring John Cheever and Raymond Carver are rolling up to a liquor store in Iowa City at 9am to get lit before they teach that day.  Welcome to the University of Iowa - we have always been good at writing and drinking.  *clinks glass*  But in all seriousness, Laing has started her book this way to highlight how very far down into the addiction-hole these two very talented writers had got themselves.  Which was very far.  All six of the writers she focused on - F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver - seemed to inhabit alcohol addictions as bad as their writing was great.  Why is that?  And why was it so hard for them to maintain any sort of sobriety?

This is a very interesting and readable set of linked essays (well, we keep it in the essays section at the store but it veers between memoir, biography, lit studies, and essay over the course of Laing's trip from New York to New Orleans to Key West to Port Angeles, WA, via Chicago - mostly on a train) musing over the relationship between six writers and their relationships with alcoholism. Laing presents details of the authors' drunken exploits almost clinically; there are no excuses made for the broken families and friendships caused by the bottle.  Since I was less familiar with the authors' specific biographies Laing was presenting me with a lot of new information.  The many collective attempts at sobriety by the men, with only Carver and Cheever attaining any lasting sobriety, are chilling in how deeply entrenched the addictive mechanism remains in the brain and body.

But what holds the book back, in my opinion, is that Laing concentrates solely on six men. Granted, she says alcoholic women writers hit far too close to a personal issue but I think it would have been good to pull in one or two women for contrast. Or perhaps a writer of a different race.  Or perhaps not American? On the personal side, her own connection with an alcoholic family member sometimes provides contrast but is also very vague next to the detailed movements of Fitzgerald and especially Williams, who seemed to be a favorite.

On Reading 'The Grapes of Wrath'

Summary from Goodreads:
One of today’s foremost Steinbeck scholars writes an extended meditation on the influence of The Grapes of Wrath, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of its first publication

In this compelling biography of a book, Susan Shillinglaw delves into John Steinbeck’s classic to explore the cultural, social, political, scientific, and creative impact of The Grapes of Wrath upon first publication, as well as its enduring legacy. First published in April 1939, Steinbeck’s National Book Award–winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads, driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. The story of their struggle remains eerily relevant in today’s America and stands as a portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, “in the souls of the people.”

I've been meaning to re-read Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath for a while now (sophomore American Lit teacher did a fair job at making this one of the least enjoyable novels ever) and while I have started on it, I'm still only on chapter 5.  Fail.  When Susan Shillinglaw's slim companion On Reading 'The Grapes of Wrath' caught my eye I thought that might be good to help me over my Steinbeck reading hump.  

Shillinglaw provides a  very good overview of the writing and publication history of The Grapes of Wrath as well as some basic literary analysis (i.e. the five layers that make up the plot) without hitting you over the head with symbolism.  She also pulls in example from a few of Steinbeck's other work, particularly Sea of Cortez which isn't a novel (I didn't know that).  If you're working on a re-read of TGoW, like me, this is a really good companion but it's also just a nice book to read on the 75th anniversary of TGoW's publication.