You've Been Warned by James Patterson and Howard Roughan

This book has two stars on amazon. I didn't think it was so bad. I mean, it isn't something I would read again but it was quick and served its purpose as a one-chapter-before-bed novel. Well, it wasn't so great at that because I have to admit that I had a nightmare over it once. Just once though. 

This book is a first person point of view about a young nanny/photographer in New York City. (It seems everyone is a something-slash-something in New York City, but thats neither here nor there). She starts having peculiar things happen to her which makes the audience thinks she is crazy, but she accepts them in a dreamlike way. The peculiar things are very crazyperson-like like hearing music in her head or seeing cockroaches on her skin but it turns out she is in hell. You would think hell is slightly scarier than a bad trip, but no, it turns out that the big reveal is that she is in full-on serious hell. I know. I KNOW.

The second kick in the pants is why she is in hell. It turns out that she is in hell for sleeping with a married man, not taking part in the murders that lie central to the story. At the end of the story you get the same feeling you got when it turned out that the book your parents gave you in middle school had a lesson.

About half way through I felt as though the story was just a nice exposition on what it might feel like to be a crazy person. In that way the book excelled. I understood some of her actions as strange as they might have looked from a street observer.

It probably got two stars because it felt like a particularly bad Sunday school lesson by the final chapter. Be even the most innocent of mistresses and you'll end up in hell. Even if you are in love, even if your a photographer. You will end up in the helliest hell you've ever helled. Its like when you are watching a cooking documentary and it turned out it was sponsored by PETA. It turned out that the moral of this book was Jesus.

Well played James Patterson.

Chicken Soup for the Soul: Runners

I'm glad I read Born to Run already, because if this was the first running book I'd read I would quit altogether. Maybe I'd quit running too. This book wasn't inspirational. I know that people can write more inspirational stories about running, every issue of Runner's World Magazine has something honestly inspirational in it.


Going into this you know that its going to be hit or miss. There are 31 stories, 31 individual contributors, and at least one of them is going to just downright suck. It just wish there was at least one great one.

Some of the short stories were memorable. One was about this guy that started running because he started seeing an obese neighbor running past his house twice every single day. He starts running because he is fat-shamed into thinking he is less fit than an obese person. After his marathon, he talks to her and finds that she had just been running to Mcdonalds to read the paper every morning. That one made me laugh out loud. Then there was this other one about a girl that proclaims that she used to be fat and unhappy. Now that she runs every single day and spends hours at the gym and never eats, she, at 18 years old, is the happiest she has ever been. I laughed out loud at that one too.

It just didn't feel like they dug very deep. Sure runners are supposed to be healthier, thinner, happier, more beautiful people that statistically will make more money in thier lives, but geez, it seemed like the only thing they ever talked about was how thin and happy they were.

Over-the-top Ultramarathoner Dean Karnazes' story was billed to be the biggest draw. He is on the cover and the same photo is used inbetween sections. That's a dozen instances of Dean Karnazes. His story wasn't particularly moving is the thing. His story was about how his daughter wanted to do a street race with him and showed a particular amount of courage by pushing through the pain. His contribution wasn't about him, it was about his daughter. I understand how that could be one of the most memorable moments of his life, but it just wasn't particularly moving since the whole world doesn't idolize his daughter. We wanted to read about Dean Karnazes for goodness sake. I wanted to know why he ran that first time, why he ever ran a single mile over a marathon, and why he chose this to be his whole life, his lasting contribution. Certainly it wasn't so once he was known the world over for running, he can see his daughter show a precocious amount of grit on race day. Sure its nice to have a story by Dean Karnazes in this book, but I don't know if his contribution was worth a cover.

Then there were the cancer survivor stories. Cancer survivor stories are intrinsically motivational. No one can fathom just how painful that brush with mortality is until it actually happens. Too bad that the tales of cancer survival played out like lifetime original movies. Most of the stories were also written by friends of cancer survivors, which had almost no depth at all. It makes me wonder if there was a stack of cancer survivor stories that they rejected because they were too real.

The triathlon stories were neither here nor there. And they were all the same. There I said it.

Would I recommend this book? Hell no. Take your $11.99 and go buy Born to Run.

The Postcard Killers by James Patterson and Liza Marklund

I picked this book at a mom and pop trade-in paperback store. These types of stores are endlessly fascinating for me and even though I wasn't itching for a read, I picked this one up for 4 dollars.

The story centers on four characters: two killers, a brash NYPD detective abroad, and an unwillingly involved hot-to-trot journalist. The story takes place mostly in Sweden, despite the novel having an Eiffel tower on the cover.  The killers were a couple of sexually charged young adults named Syliva and Mac who bewitch other young couples into date shenanigans abroad only to leave their throats cut and bodies gruesomely posed. The killers then send a postcard to a local newspaper for press.

The NYPD detective has a hat in the ring because his own daughter was one of the victims. He flounces around all emotionally charged and making brash stupid decisions. I can tell by the end of the book that we are supposed to see him as a Captain Kirk figure, the type where they get their strength from their humanness, but I just saw him as an incredibly unethical police officer working WAY WAY out of his jurisdiction. The characterization felt forced because his personality was not consistent. The book decided that he was emotionally unattached and terrible with intimacy about 3/4ths the way through the book. He sounded incredibly emotionally open before this point.

The lady journalist, whats her name? Dessie? I think the Swedish Bestselling co-author got a chance to shine with this one, but it was really too bad that Dessie was incredibly boring. Dessie spent the whole book regretting stuff and worrying. She did nothing to drive the plot forward. She was the ambassador to Sweden, translating for the Detective, connecting him to all the right people, and eventually having sex with him when he needed to crash for the night. But I got to learn some neat little Swedish tidbits through Dessie, like about local texture of the Swedish Countryside and the international fanfare caused by the Arctic circle Ikea. (as a sidenote, it complete cracked me up that the Ikea was a central part of this book about Sweden. Its like if we went to France and everyone is eating french fries and wearing berets.)

The fun part of the novel was trying to figure out what the motive of the murders were. The book shined when we got into Syliva and Mac's back story.  The tension pacing of the book was a little thrown off because of it, but I think I understand what they were going for. You see, when they released Syliva and Mac from police interrogation because they were ruled out of the case, the story was really picking up and it was terrifying that the real killers were being set free. Then the detective drops everything and flies back home to relax with his buddies in the United States. He had to do it because Syliva and Mac were from the LA area and he needed some hometown investigation. It felt like he ducked out of harms way and took a vacation. Sure, the book still remained interesting because we learned the entire UCLA backstory at that point, but still, the pacing was chaotic. 
A key point in the novel is when the newspaper company tries to draw the killers out by offering money for an interview. The key was to entrap them into revealing thier identies so they can be arrested. Syliva and Mac do not take them up on that offer. Then they somehow make a "mistake" in their crime pattern which leads to their identities being revealed. In the book it is implied that the paper caused the break up in crime pattern, but I don't get it. Sounds like they didn't take the bait to me.

So I understand the reviews for this book were bad. I didn't think it was that terrible. It was quite entertaining I thought. All I expected was a frothy read to pass my time in incredibly short bursts. I packed this baby in my massive purse and got it read in 3 days. Perhaps all the reviewers did not like how the killers were revealed right off the bat?

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

I just read Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. The book chronicles the now infamous Chris McCandless, the young man that died during a romantic extended camping trip in the Alaskan wilderness in 1992.  His life has been much considered as there have been numerous essays about his life and motivations.

Here is the plot, briefly. Chris graduates Emory college with honors and defies his parents by not continuing onto Law School.  He instead decides to travel across the United States, taking on the moniker Alex Supertramp. His transition to independence from society is a slow one, as he spends a few years taking on odd jobs under the radar and finding shelter when it comes. His ideals (and ego) are fueled by the fictional loners penned by Jack London and Henry David Thoreau. He eventually hitchhikes up to Alaska to live off the wilderness with embarrassing low provisions. He dies after an impressive 112 days.

The book is written so carefully, so respectfully. The author frequently mentions other writers and outdoorsman who bash McCandless’s inexperience and arrogance who imply that such a lack of respect for nature deserves death. Krakauer goes completely the other way asking us to remember what it was like to be young and idealistic, when we were ready to die for our beliefs. Well, this young man did.

Chris dislikes his parents. The reasoning is abstract and I’m sure the actual relationship is more complicated than the book could even describe. What is for sure is that Chris didn’t have a solid reason to not like his parents. He grew up privileged with loving parents who gave him everything he ever needed and encouraged positive behaviors and life paths. It would be nice if there were a cut and dry reason for Chris to set out on his own, but there wasn’t. If it were me and I had the inkling to do a life adventure like that, I just wouldn’t be able to take myself seriously. That is definitely something Chris could do, and that was take himself seriously.

It is sad that he died. What makes it worse is that he was ready to go back into society with renewed vigor when he realized that he couldn’t. He planned out this romantic trip because he had a problem with his world view that made relationships unbearable. He planned a trip so he could get away from it all for while. And it worked. That’s the crazy part. It worked.  He felt more grateful for the things he had, he missed his family, and he was ready to enjoy being a productive member of society.

My only qualm with the book is that the author spends a little too much time talking about other explorers that met the same fate. He takes it too far  when the author includes his own climbing adventure to the list of other great blunders. That unnecessary portion made the exactly 200 page book a little irksome, like he was rushing to meet his page quota.  It doesn’t help that the few lines of text that the author managed to scrape up from McCandless’s post cards and diaries are repeated multiple times in the book, sometimes to exhaustion. I realize this was necessary to ground the timeline in a circular plot, but after reading the same post card for the 4^th time, it felt like just poor writing.

I definitely recommend this book. In a world where life is so cut and dry, where actions and consequences rule our every decision and foresight trumps every plan, it is amazing to read about someone who rejects the worldview of the ever shrinking room. Sure he dies. I bet that gives us the affirmation we need to stay trapped in our comfort zone. 

Summer Haitus

Dear Loyal Readers,

Like the school children and teachers that have laid the foundation of book reviews, voracious reviews will take a summer haitus.

Happy summer reading!

Sincerely,

MZ

Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

Pattern Recognition touches on a number of hot button issues with me, as if it were designed to appeal to my interests:  Internet memes, international travel, solving puzzles, etc.  The main character is a marketing consultant, starting the book traveling to London to evaluate an advertising campaign for a client.  She is also active in an online community that's obsessed with a series of video clips that have appeared online, without any attribution.

Early in the book, her employer takes an interest in these same videos, giving her a chance to explore her personal obsession with the financial backing of a very rich man.  Her journey takes her to three continents, and she meets numerous colorful characters.

I enjoy how the characters throw themselves into their obsessions.  Their obsessions are what define them, and how they define themselves.  The allegiance that the main character feels for her particular corner of the internet is familiar to me.  Most of the characters embody the sort of tribal social order that seems more and more common, with people banding together around a shared interest rather than simply shared location or employment.

The book is well written and the mystery is interesting, but I was surprised to realize that there were sequels.  The mystery of the footage is neatly wrapped up at the end, and I didn't quite make the kind of connection with any of the characters to be interested in what they're doing next week.  I'll read them anyway, eventually, but I'm wary of being Ringworlded, where the sequels take the wind out of the sails of a an excellent first book.

Before I go to Sleep by S.J. Watson

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S.J Watson writes analytically, tying up loose ends and answering questions about suspicious plot holes before we can even sniff them out. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. A ludicrous plot line does not cause a lack of trust in the authors skill. On the other hand, the perfectly tied up story lines and too-sensible actions of the character make me feel trapped. She writes as if it is the real world, with gravity heavy enough to support a real life. My life is already like that, and I can not enjoy fiction that does not take risks.

Before I Go To Sleep is about a woman, Christine, that has a rather unusual form of amnesia. She can retain memories for a single day only to lose everything when she goes to sleep at night. The plot moves forward by use of a journal that she writes in and reads from start to finish every day. The book tells the story from the journal's point of view. She finds some things out about her past through selective memory recall, namely that she may not be able to trust her caretakers. Here is where I would normally give you the spoilers, but I have grown as a person and I will acknowledge that only a single tension compelled me to continue reading until the end. It sincerely took me by surprise. I only started sniffing out the twist 30 or 40 pages before it was revealed.

The landscape of the book wasn't very intriguing. It took me days of reflection to realize it. The same things happened everyday, and they weren't that interesting. I could have spent my time looking straight at the walls of my blank bedroom instead and have gotten the same amount of detail about her house and life. Watson spends lots of time reintroducing that house too. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt though, she might have been using that repetition as a illustrative device to demonstrate the tedium of the situation.

The lack of autonomy bothered me. I mean, I know she has amnesia, but she is still responsible for her actions. She has to be reintroduced to her life every single day, and yet she chooses to allow the same thing to happen the next day. She doesn't give up the security that her husband and suburban life give her and allows herself to sit helplessly at the feet of the system. I do not think she is helpless at all, but she acts it. I don't think I can pin this on poor writing. It gives Christine a personality that is completely separate from her memories. Christine is that lady that went to grad school because she couldn't find a job and got married when she wanted to start having children. She thought about it too much, and it led to a boring and too-safe life. I drove me nuts. She could have taken the bus out of there at the drop of a hat, but she was too afraid of what might happen. This is how extreme domestic abuse happens even when women aren't mentally handicapped.

Overall, read if you like amnesia stories.  This one isn't terrible, but its not great either.