Connect
Sponsors
Currently Reading
-
Terms
The Book Lady's Blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Reviews and articles posted here are property of The Book Lady's Blog and are not to be posted elsewhere without permission. Please contact me if you wish to post any of my work, or any excerpt thereof, in any other location or format.
Miscellaneous
Meet Bookrageous!
Technical Stuff
Design Credits
Sep
19
The Bare Necessities—Lenore Zion (MY DEAD PETS ARE INTERESTING)
2011 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
The Bare Necessities is a series in which authors share annotated reading lists of books they love.
Lenore Zion is a therapist, a writer, and the author of My Dead Pets Are Interesting, an irresistible collection of personal essays that range from the profound to the ridiculous, the “that’s so insightful” to the “Ohmigod, I feel so validated by the knowledge that someone else is just as secretly weird as I am.” Zion is about my age, and I’ve overcome my extreme jealousy of her talent (not to mention that the folks behind The Nervous Breakdown, one of my favorite websites, published her book) to bring her here today for this guest post about her the books that make her feel equally validated and understood.
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
One of the recurrent themes of misfititude is oppression. Society is oppressive. Your parents are oppressive. Your peers are oppressive. Misfits are expected to respond to the pressures to either conform, if the misfit appears to be unexceptional, or perform, if the misfit appears to be exceptional. Ender, the protagonist of Ender’s Game, is expected to do both. He’s got it worse than your average freak – he represents something so many standard deviations away from the mean that he cannot even remain on Earth. This six-year-old boy has to go to space and spend his entire childhood and adolescence at battle school, where he must conform to the culture of kiddie violence and war while his commanders, sadistic as they are, design a social structure intended to isolate the poor kid even in the face of the demanded conformity. This is because he is, apparently, humankind’s only hope in defeating a terrifying race of insect-aliens that intend to totally f**k us up. Talk about pressure. This is way worse than getting teased in the lunchroom because your pants have pleats. Thank goodness they sent the kid to space – if they didn’t, he’d be an easy recruit to the Trench Coat Mafia.
The Breast by Philip Roth
Acne is an embarrassing condition. People judge you as unclean and unhealthy, even though you totally shower at least once a week and smear creams formulated to dissolve industrial metals on your face three times a day. The zits serve as the tattoos of the freak tribe, and some days it’s so bad you don’t even want to leave the house. You know what’s worse? When you turn into a giant tit. That’s what happens to David Kepesh, the protagonist of The Breast. Not only does the process of metamorphosing into a massive breast leave you feeling a little like the weirdo in the room, but once you’ve completed your transformation, you don’t even have the option to leave that room! Your only respite from your existence as a bona fide freak are your sexual fantasies, which are, frankly, confusing as hell now that you’re a big boob and you’re unfamiliar with what might serve as your erogenous zones. Admit it, you choose acne.
Psychopathia Sexualis by Dr. Richard von Krafft-Ebbing
Do you remember the one boy who got caught masturbating into a sock and got called “Fruit of the Loom” for the rest of his teenage years? Those were rough times for that kid. The 238 case studies detailed in Krafft-Ebbing’s Psychopathia Sexualis, however, reveal what might have been a touch more humiliating. I’m certain most of you fellas can freely admit to some silly sexually-motivated acts in adolescence, and ladies, you’re not the conventional little flowers you pretend to be, either. This is not to say that there aren’t some behaviors best kept private – admitting to whatever fringe fantasies you have is wholly unnecessary. My only point is, most of you haven’t met the requirements needed to earn a spot in this collection of the sexually bizarre. And if you read Krafft-Ebbing’s case studies, you’ll be glad for that. You’ll be shouting confessions of your inoffensive abnormalities from the rooftop.
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
Your mom is super embarrassing, isn’t she? She’s always just inviting herself right on into the television room when you’re playing Call of Duty: Black Ops with your friends and asking if you guys want sandwiches and lemonade. Well, at least she didn’t purposely manufacture you and your siblings as cash-cow mutants for the traveling freak show she and your dad run. Come to think of it, just as you’re very happy not to be a gigantic breast, you’re also thankful not to have flippers! And look, if you have flippers, you’re still sitting pretty compared to the family around which Dunn’s Geek Love is centered. Because chances are, you’re not also coping with the added element of incest.
Read these books, misfits. And then get together with your weirdo friends and celebrate your good fortune with a burger and a milkshake.
The Bare Necessities—Lewis Shiner (DARK TANGOS)
2011 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
The Bare Necessities is a series in which authors and book industry professionals share annotated reading lists of books they love.
Lewis Shiner is the author of eight novels and several collections of short fictions. His latest novel Dark Tangos is out now from Subterranean Press. I’m about halfway through the novel—my first introduction to Shiner’s work—and am really enjoying it, so I’m thrilled to have Lew here today with a post about the books that have inspired his writing.
I’ve just published a new novel, Dark Tangos, that deals with the long shadow that the Dirty War in Argentina (1976-83) continues to cast over the country. Rebecca kindly offered me space here to talk about a few of the books that inspired and informed the process of writing it.
The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein
How many times in your life do you read a book that completely changes the way you see the world? That makes sense of what before seemed random, that takes abstract concepts brings them to life in real locations, tying them to real human beings whose lives are at stake? This is a jaw-dropping, page-turning saga of global economics that will keep you up to all hours of the night.
Klein’s central concept is the fundamental incompatibility of democracy and free-market economics. She reduces the theories of Milton Friedman’s Chicago School of economics, which came to dominate the world in the 1980s, to three central principles: privatization of national assets, elimination of social programs, and removal of restraints on foreign investors. It’s a simple three-stage game plan that allows major corporations to move into a country, liquidate its assets, and ship them overseas, leaving the victim drained, broken, and usually in permanent debt.
Since no sane population would vote to have its wealth looted (well, except in the US), this is where capitalism and democracy tend to part ways. Klein demonstrates how the big corporations, hand in hand with the CIA, the IMF, and the World Bank, have repeatedly taken advantage of economic, political, or natural disasters to gain an initial foothold. Among many other things, she explains the real meaning of Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” banner, and why it was quite true at the time.
All of that makes the book important, but The Shock Doctrine is elevated to greatness by Klein’s writing, which is electrifying, scrupulously documented, and highly personal. I was particularly impressed with the sections on Argentina, which all rang true with my own personal experience.
Lo Pasado Pensado by Felipe Pigna
Sadly, this book is available only in Spanish, but I need to talk about it because it is so amazing to read. I don’t know if anyone has done anything comparable in English.
The title roughly translates to “Considering the Past.” The author is an enormously popular Argentine historian, and the book consists of interviews he did discussing Argentine history starting with the exile of Perón in 1955 and ending with the fall of the country’s last military dictatorship in 1983. Pigna interviews historians and journalists for perspective, but the real meat of the book lies in the testimony of eyewitnesses who lived through some of the most dramatic events in recent times.
The interviews are intercut to create a seamless, chronological narrative, the voices sometimes forming a Greek chorus to a tragedy, sometimes arguing with each other. The ultimate effect is to make history immediate, personal, and alive. This is a book that it’s worth learning Spanish to read. Read more
The Bare Necessities—Karl Marlantes
2011 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
The Bare Necessities is a series in which authors and book industry professionals share annotated reading lists of books they love.
Karl Marlantes is the author of Matterhorn, a novel of the Vietnam War (and one my favorite books of 2010) and a new work of nonfiction What It Is Like to Go to War that is part memoir, part military theory, part psychology, part philosophy, and all incredible. I am beyond thrilled to have him here today with this post about the books that have shaped him and his ideas about life, war, and writing.
I write the way I do because of who I am. While books certainly don’t have the impact of my parents, where I grew up, or my own genetic makeup, they certainly have contributed to the person I am today. When pointing out influential books, however, there’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Why did those particular books appeal to me in the first place?
I remember a late night in 1964 when my big brother took me out for coffee in our town’s only all night café to ask me what in the world possessed me to join the Marines. That question never got answered, because he wasn’t really asking a question. He was telling me he thought I was an idiot. What are big brothers for after all? However, the question of why certain books appealed to me in the first place aside, I’d say two books stand out as far as getting me to join the Marines, which got me into the Vietnam War, which influenced my life enormously. The first is a Landmark book called The Story of the U.S. Marines, by George Hunt. The second is Fear and Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard.
Our little town library was full of Landmark books: Betsy Ross and the Flag, The Story of Thomas Alva Edison– if you don’t know them, you get the drift. There must have been around thirty of them and I’m sure I read them all. I’m also sure I read The Story of the U. S. Marines at least ten times between the ages of eight and eleven. This was when your name got written on a card whenever you checked out a book. I pretty much covered a whole card all by myself. Mrs. Whittey, the librarian, would just roll her eyes and put a ditto mark under the ditto mark that was under the four or five previous lines with my name on them.
My own personal philosophy about life and meaning has been highly influenced by the writings of Søren Kierkegaard. I first read Kierkegaard in the eighth grade when a Lutheran minister gave me a copy of Training in Christianity, which I think was translated by Walter Lowrie. The next year I was into Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death, both of which I still don’t understand, but still scare me. I remember walking on the beach one night in the rain racking my brain about making “a significant choice” so I would be able to become an individual instead of a perpetual possibility and therefore a nobody. I chose to enlist in the Marines. My brother pointed out to me that I could have chosen to go to business school or move to Canada and accomplish the same thing, but then that goes back to that chicken and egg issue. I have continued to mine Kierkegaard for whatever I can. When I was a sophomore in college I even tried to find pointers in The Seducer’s Diary, which was in Part I of Either/Or. I also found Judge William in Part II really boring. When I re-read Either/Or about three years ago, Williams had changed for the better. As an aside, I think the recent translations of Kierkegaard by Howard and Edna Hong and their careful editing and footnoting are magnificent. Read more
The Bare Necessities—Christina Shea (SMUGGLED)
2011 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
The Bare Necessities is a series in which authors and book industry professionals share annotated reading lists of books they love.
Christina Shea is the author of Smuggled, a novel about about a woman’s life in eastern Europe after she is smuggled across a key border in the final days of World War II as a child. Smuggled is available in paperback from Grove Press.
I want to be transported, swept away when I read! If the writing grabs me, I will read it. I have a weakness for lyrical prose, but I also have a strong desire for information. Of course, a plot that asks a central or moral question is always compelling. And what reader doesn’t love a hero? Combine all of these qualities with a fresh take on history and it’s heaven on earth for me. There are writers who reach this kind of Shakespearean proportion in their work with seeming ease: V.S. Naipaul and Charles Frazier in Cold Mountain and of course Toni Morrison, Garcia Marquez, Ursula LeGuin and many others, Denis Johnson come to think of it. Here are the ones that inspired the writing of my new novel Smuggled.
Paradise Lost by John Milton
I hope it doesn’t sound too crazy to say that this poem changed my life. I was a lit major in college, reading Paradise Lost with a brilliant professor. I think the whole semester was on Paradise Lost. It is eternally long, a meditation on the relationship between God and man, Creator and creation, and as an eighteen year old recently fallen Catholic it hit me where I lived. Anyway, it tops my Bare Necessities not because you should bring Milton to the beach with you, necessarily, although I do find it easier to read poetry on the beach somehow, but because this epic poem spoke to me directly at a formative time and I have never forgotten the rapture!
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
If you have read Smuggled you know where I am going with this. Mary Shelley opens her 19th C Gothic novel Frankenstein with a now famous quote from Paradise Lost. I preface Smuggled with the same quote to honor both writers. In doing all the historical research for my story, I came to a vivid notion: it is possible to give birth to monsters. Motherhood is a central theme for me, as a woman and writer and I identified with Mary Shelley, who had multiple miscarriages and was pregnant while writing Frankenstein, although she barely mentions these experiences in her personal writings. Frankenstein tells the story of a creature denied by his creator. For me, this all fit metaphorically with the period of history that I was writing and with my character Éva’s story. I knew that the only way Éva could find herself again was through mothering because this was the hole or whole that needed feeling. Read more
The Bare Necessities—Maddie Dawson (THE STUFF THAT NEVER HAPPENED)
2011 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
The Bare Necessities is a series in which authors and book industry professionals share annotated reading lists of books they love.
Maddie Dawson is the author of The Stuff That Never Happened, now out in paperback from Broadway Books. She’s here today with a selection of her favorite books about marriage, secrets, and self-deception.
I hate to admit it—it makes me sound so ghoulish—but I am fascinated by unhappy marriages. In fact, I’d have to say that I’m taken with the whole crazy notion of marriage in the first place. The very idea that two people can stand up together in their best clothes with all their friends and family watching and declare that they will not only live together for the rest of their lives, but also be each other’s best friend, soulmate, lover, co-parent, and financial partner, for pretty much forever, amazes me.
I mean, really—what could possibly go wrong?
And yet, despite the rumors circulating that this system doesn’t always produce the very happiest of circumstances, people do keep standing up for this—droves of them day after day after day. (I myself have done it twice—and just like the national average, it’s worked in 50 percent of my experience.)
Yet all marriages—from the happiest to the most disillusioned—go through upheavals and changes and stages, and no one (sometimes not even the participants themselves) can accurately predict whether it’s a keeper or not. When I was writing The Stuff That Never Happened, I wanted to show a 28-year-long marriage that almost anyone would describe as successful and happy—happy, that is, except for one thing. The two people involved, Annabelle and Grant, have made a pact never to speak of a secret at the core of their marriage: the fact that in their first chaotic year together, Annabelle fell in love with Grant’s best friend and mentor, and actually left for a while to go off with him.
Ghoul that I am, some of my favorite books are about marriages and delusional secrets, and all the fun and exciting ways in which we deceive ourselves. And when a book about those subjects can make me laugh as well—well, then I’m out buttonholing strangers and friends and forcing them to read right along with me.
One of my very favorite books about these very subjects is Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler, the story of two people who are wonderfully mismatched—Maggie is garrulous and scattered and believes that she can get (read: manipulate) the people she loves to do the right thing, while Ira is aloof and precise and thinks that everything is just about to go to hell—and yet they keep plugging along in a marriage that really, despite all its exasperations and mistakes, has a lot of love at its center. Neither Maggie nor Ira undergoes a huge change in the novel, which takes place over the course of one long summer day, but—really, isn’t that reality for you? Anne Tyler creates so many funny, real, and telling moments in this book, passages that make you put the book down and just laugh in recognition. Read more
