Chapter Ninety-Six: Fat Cat at Large

Okay, so I'll be the first to admit that Fat Cat at Large by Janet Cantrell is not great fiction, nor is the writing anything other than mediocre.  But I still had a really fun time reading this mystery novel!  It was a light read, as light and fluffy as the orange cat on its cover, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  The characters are interesting, if not particularly deeply-drawn, and the settings--Minneapolis, more generally, and a small dessert-bar store, more specifically--are fun and off the beaten path.  Also, every now and then there is a lone paragraph or two told from the point of view of the cat.  These paragraphs serve no purpose in terms of furthering the plot, as far as I can tell, but they're amusing.  And we get so many human perspectives--why not get the cat's view?  (Even if that cat's view is only the product of a human's imagination.)  Also, there are recipes for homemade cat treats and dessert bars at the end of the book.  So if you're looking for a book with a cat on the cover or for quick mystery where you'll probably figure out who done it before the protagonist does, this is the book for you.

Chapter Ninety-Five: The Glass Palace

The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh is a sweeping, epic saga of the lives of various members of three generations of an Indian-Burmese family living in India, Burma, and Malaya from the late 1800s through the present day.  It is not an arduous read, although the book is quite long.  The only part that I felt lagged slightly was the end, which feels a bit drawn-out.  While I appreciate that Ghosh wanted to tie up the loose ends for all of his characters, it started to feel a bit exhaustive to get so many details about so many people without much of a narrative to coordinate those details.  Nonetheless, this is a really interesting novel that had the added benefit of teaching me something about Burma and its recent history--say from the end of the 1800s through the present day, and especially during WWII--a subject I know very little about.  If you enjoy sweeping historical family sagas with large casts of characters and lots of details, this is the book for you.

Chapter Ninety-Four: Assholes, A Theory

The title of this philosophical non-fiction work by Aaron James is not a joke: this is sincerely a book that presents a philosophical theory of assholes--what they are and why non-assholes find them so disturbing and offensive.  I'll say that among the very limited number of philosophical works I've read, this is, hands down, the most interesting and engaging and pertinent to daily life.  James puts forward a compelling and understandable definition of assholes basically as people who systematically assign special privileges to themselves out of an entrenched sense of entitlement that allows them to ignore any attempts by others to convince them of their wrongness.  James also provides extensive examples of different types of assholes using various public figures as his models.  He also provides some tips on asshole management, since it is unfortunately impossible to avoid all assholes in daily life.  These tips are not advice on how to change assholes--as he defines them, they are incorrigible, after all--but on how to prevent them from ruining your day with their assholery.  Most interesting to me, however, was his theory of asshole capitalism and its greater societal effects and implications, which he puts forward toward the end of this book.  Whether you agree with any of his propositions or not, Assholes, A Theory is a thought-provoking read.

Chapter Ninety-Three: Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good

This is Jan Karon's latest installment in the Mitford/Father Tim series, and I enjoyed it just as much as I've enjoyed the rest of her books about the little town of Mitford and its very realistic cast of characters, which focus on Father Tim, an affable Episcopalian rector who suffers problems and experiences joys like the rest of us.  It's so lovely in a nice long series like this--this is the eleventh novel about Mitford and Father Tim--to get extended character development across so many stories.  As soon as I started reading this installment, I felt like I was back in a place and with people that I know and love well.  Reading this book was like reuniting with old, dear friends: a lovely experience.

Chapter Ninety-Two: The Fault in Our Stars

The Fault in Our Stars is John Green's latest best-seller, and since I really enjoy Green's work I'm a bit surprised that it took me so long after its publication to read it.  I was a bit apprehensive because I knew it would be a tear-jerker, and because I just wasn't in the mood, somehow, to read a book about teenagers with cancer.  But once I finally picked up this book, I couldn't put it down.  Green is a master of including levity in dealing with heavy subjects; I was chuckling from page one, even as I knew things couldn't end well.  And they don't, though I won't say how, in case you haven't read the book.  But in the meantime, there are plenty of really touching, heartwarming moments that are never sappy or saccharin or unrealistic about the reality of the situation, which is that these teens are living with cancer every day.  And the cancer does nasty things to them, like make it hard to breathe or take away their sight.  Green is pretty descriptive about the physical challenges and consequences of living with cancer--it's not a cutesy, romanticized version of living with cancer, as far as I can tell, although I've never had cancer myself, so I could be wrong.  This book sucked me in and grabbed me--I loved that it had a strong, female protagonist--and I recommend it for anyone looking for a quick, absorbing read.

Chapter Ninety-One: Kindred

I read Kindred by Octavia Butler on a friend's recommendation, and I'll admit I was a bit hesitant about it at first because it looked pretty weird, even by my standards.  While this book is labeled science fiction because it involves involuntary time-travel, it really feels much more like a work of historical fiction--and it is gripping.  It tells the story of Dana, datedly described on the back cover of the edition I read as "a modern black woman"living with her new husband in California in 1976.  She suddenly finds herself being pulled back in time to a plantation in Maryland owned by the father of one of her ancestors--a white ancestor.  She is called back in time several times to save her ancestor's life, and each time her stay at the plantation lasts longer and the threats to her survival increase.  Butler does not skimp in her portrayal of the horrors of slavery in America.  While I have read other books set on slave-era plantations and studied slavery in school, this novel really succeeded in making real and visceral what it might actually have been like to be enslaved on a plantation in the United States.  This book is pretty intense.  And as intense as it was to read, I was still left with the truth that living it would have been immeasurably more intense, indescribably so.  The time travel part is strange, and I would have liked to see more development of the relationship between Dana and her husband both before and after she gets called back in time--sometimes bringing her husband with her, but even with these minor complaints, I was generally hooked by this book.  I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a visceral representation of what it may have been like to be enslaved in America.

Chapter Ninety: The Green Knowe Chronicles

I re-read the first five Green Knowe Chronicles this summer, and I read the sixth book in this series by L.M. Boston for the first time ever.  Although the books were all originally published between 1954 and 1976, somehow when I first heard of these books only the first five had been re-issued by the publisher. Anyway, I've read them all now, I'm happy to say, and thoroughly enjoyed them. They are gentle, rather slow stories centered around Green Knowe, which is an ancient manor house in the English countryside, and its various past and present inhabitants. The only unpleasant aspect of the series is that there are often references to people of color that seem dated, or even offensive to current sensibilities.  While they don't seem to be meant to be hurtful if one bears in mind the time the novel was written, they're still unfortunate. Still, overall, these stories highlight the importance of family and--and it's not necessarily the families characters are born with, but the ones they create.  Many of the stories focus on Tolly, a young boy who finds more of a family in his great-grandmother, who owns Green Knowe and whom he spends school vacations with, than in his father and step-mother, who are off in colonial Burma.  The two welcome a young Burmese refugee into their home for a while, and he becomes part of the family, too--as does a gorilla who has escaped from a zoo.  And one of the home's former inhabitants--still present in spirit--forms a deep connection with a black companion whom her father purchased out of slavery in the Caribbean to aid her since she is blind.  These connections, as well as the ones formed across history between the home's present occupants and its past occupants, who often show up as ghosts, make these stories rather touching.  And the pastoral idyll of the setting is not unpleasant, either.  If you're looking for a gentle, old-fashioned story about the importance of family and the magical presence of history, these are the stories for you.