I
started the year slacking on writing book reviews, partly because I’ve become
slightly bored with writing them and partly because no one reads them anyway. And now here we are already in
mid-April. So I decided that instead of
writing separate reviews for each book I’ve read so far this year, I’d just do
a post with my first quarter reviews of the five books I read from January through
March. The best part is that this will force me to be more succinct.
The Best
White
Teeth by Zadie Smith
One
way that I judge how much I liked a book is how quickly I start looking to read
another of the author’s works. And
before I even got through White Teeth I was checking to see if Zadie Smith had
any other novels (she does – 3 more to be exact.) It was a completely original novel and Smith
is a talented and creative writer (and she’s received quite a bit of acclaim
for this, her first novel, as well as the others.)
The story, set mostly in England, traces three families, connected through
friendship and marriage, through the 1970’s, 80’s, and 90’s, moving back and forth
in time to show where everyone came from and how they arrived in their present circumstances. The main characters are Achie (a
simple-minded man on his second marriage to a much younger Jamaican wife) and
Samad (an unhappy Bengali immigrant worried that his two young sons won’t be properly
raised Muslims in London.) The two are middle-aged friends who served together in WWII,
and now find themselves battling with their families and extended families, a colorful cast of characters to say the least.
The book takes on some weighty subjects like race, class and religion,
but does it with humor and wit. Smith
has a thoroughly unique voice and I look forward to reading another work of
hers.
The Rest
I
Wear The Black Hat by Chuck Klosterman
The
last Klosterman work I read was his novel The Visible Man, which I didn’t
really care for. But this was back to
more standard Klosterman, a series of essays on the nature of villains, done with typical Klosterman humor and deep thinking. I love his unique take on subjects, but I think I need to stick to his nonfiction.
Killing
Kennedy by Bill O’Reilly & Martin Dugard
Mrs.
purchased this for me for Christmas and it looked really interesting. I was a little torn since it was co-authored
by O’Reilly, which was a bit of a conflict for a left-leaning liberal such as
myself. But he seemed pretty impartial
here. There was a lot of good juicy tidbits about
the Kennedys and the rise of Camelot, including JFK’s affairs, his strained relationship
with LBJ, and how he handled the various hot button issues of his time as
president, such as the Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement. If there was anything that disappointed me it
was that I thought it was going to be more about the assassination. They didn’t get to it until the very end
and didn’t really present anything new.
Just Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone shooter and some mystery around how
it all went down. Well, I already knew
all that. Oh well, a decent read anyway
for some of the gossip.
Right
As Rain by George Pelecanos
I
first heard of Pelecanos as a writer on The Wire (and he wrote some of the best
episodes.) I saw this and another of his
books at the church book fair last summer and grabbed them both. This was a pretty standard crime novel. Not bad, but not anything to rush out to read
(or stay in to read as the case may be.)
It revolves around a private investigator, hired to look into the
killing of a black police officer by a white police officer, and it soon
becomes a conspiracy with crooked cops and drug dealers and those caught in the middle. So kind of like The Wire. I'll read the other Pelecanos book I have at some point, but this didn't make me rush to move it up the list.
The
Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
I
expected that this was going to be my favorite novel of the early part of this
year because of all the acclaim I had read about it before I picked it up to
read. It’s told as separate stories of various staff members working at a struggling English language Italian newspaper. Each chapter is separated by flashbacks to
the founder of the paper and why he made the odd decision to leave his life as
a successful American business to go start a newspaper in Europe.
For
the most part I didn’t find any of the characters sympathetic or
really all that interesting. Because the
reader only sees quick glimpses of each of the characters I didn’t think there was any
development. And the middle sections
about the founder seemed like they didn’t even belong (and certainly could have
been excluded.) Maybe it was a bit
original in style (although I didn’t think it was that original), but I truly
don’t understand all the rave reviews for this.
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