Chapter One Hundred Fifteen: Blackout and All Clear

Okay, so it has only been a year since I read Blackout and All Clear for the first time, but they are so compelling that, when searching for books that would totally and completely absorb me in their universe, I could think of nothing better-suited to the task of complete distraction than this story--told over two books--by Connie Willis.  These books make the most sense if you've already read Willis's Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, which set some of the stage for time travel as Willis writes about it in those novels and in these, but I think you could enjoy Blackout and All Clear without having read the other time travel stories.  It's hard for me to put my finger on what exactly it is about these stories that makes them so irresistible to me.  The characters are likable, yes, and the plot is original; the settings are interesting and there is plenty of action... but I think this is one of those stories that is greater than the sum of its parts.  I fully admit that it may not be as magical a story for everyone as it is for me, but if you like time travel stories I'd say you should at least give it a try.

Chapter One Hundred Fourteen: Tell the Wolves I'm Home

Tell the Wolves I'm Home is Carol Rifka Brunt's first novel, and I hope it won't be her last.  I felt dubious about this book until I started reading it, because almost from the first page it drew me in and made me care about the characters--the protagonist, yes, but also her apparently obnoxious older sister and the mysterious man--her dead uncle's lover--who reaches out to protagonist June after her uncle's death.  I thought this book would be corny or predictable, I guess, but it is neither of those things.  Instead, it is well-written with original and complex main characters whose multi-faceted relationships drive the plot.  This story kept me guessing at how it would all, ultimately turn out--and while not all of the questions raised are answered, the most important ones are, making for a satisfying read.  I was very pleasantly surprised by this novel, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone looking for a good novel.

Chapter One Hundred Thirteen: Feed

So Feed by M.T. Anderson is a book I've been meaning to read for a while for several reasons.  I had been vaguely meaning to read it because in the school library where I worked last year, there were several copies, so it seems like a big YA title and I wanted to know what it was all about.  Then, this year, a teenager I know recommended I read it.  (This was months ago!)  And I've honestly been meaning to read it since, but I just kept being busy.  But finally the time was ripe for me to read Feed, which is a book that really has nothing to do with food--I don't know about you, but to me the title conjures images of huge piles of animal-grade dried corn off the cob sliding around industrial farms.  This is totally misleading.  Basically, the feed in this book refers to a sort of computer implanted directly into the brain, so it's a feed in the sense of a web feed, like an RSS or like the push notifications on smartphones.
Feed  is written in this really convincing slangy prose--I can totally imagine teenagers of the future (and of today) talking how Anderson has written Feed.  In this way, but in no other, it reminds me of an updated Catcher in the Rye (a book of which I am not at all fond, I will note).  And this grim future is fairly believable--that's what makes it, at heart, so depressing, at least to me.  Feed provides a creepy and pretty bleak view of a potential future of the U.S., providing what almost amounts to a reducto ad absurdium of fears about the increasing role of computers in everyday life.   It is done really well--it never feels like a lecture or like there's too much exposition or description at the expense of plot.  Anderson just slips in all of these little details that you have to pay attention to about the state of affairs in this bleak future U.S. and world, so the enormity of the situation only ever creeps up on you from the side, making it much more powerful than if Anderson described it directly. But it's not depressing in a way that makes me regret having read the book--the aforementioned recommender was right to suggest it to me, and I similarly urge anyone to read it, whether you're usually into YA sci-fi or not.  Give it a chance even (or especially) if it's not your usual scene, because it provides a lot of food for thought, as it were.

Chapter One Hundred Twelve: Boy: Tales of Childhood AND Going Solo

Boy: Tales of Childhood and Going Solo are Roald Dahl's autobiographies, intended for children--the audience he is perhaps best-known for writing for, although he also wrote works intended for adults.  Anyway, I don't know why I'd never read these autobiographies before, because I love everything by Roald Dahl that I've read so far (which is not all of his work, not by any means, but I'll get around to it all eventually).  So Roald Dahl actually had this really fascinating life!  I guess that's not surprising--he had to get all those fantastic story ideas from somewhere, so it makes sense that he might have done a lot of interesting things to get those ideas.  Boy focuses on his childhood, up to the age of 18; mostly it relates his days in various boarding schools, which sound fairly miserable (especially the beatings), but also fun times like summer family trips to Norway, and some hairy medical experiences (having his nose almost ripped off his face in a car crash; having his adenoids out without general anesthetic).  Going Solo focuses on his life after he left boarding school: he decided he wanted to see the world, and the best way to do that was to go and work for a large company with many foreign branches.  So he ended up getting a job with Shell Oil that sent him to eastern Africa, to what is now Tanzania.  And then while he was there, World War Two broke out, so he joined the RAF as a pilot and had all sorts of adventures and a horrific injury as well, which he obviously survived or he wouldn't have been able to go on to become a famous writer.  Going Solo ends when he finally returns back to his mother's home from the war, and it is quite possibly one of the most moving ends to a book I've yet read.  Mostly Boy and Going Solo take a humorous or at least light tone, even when the content is a bit heavy--Dahl is a master of that sort of thing, after all--but the end was quite moving, which I wasn't expecting but which I really appreciated.  For anyone who wants to learn about Roald Dahl as a person, or about one man's experience growing up in Wales in the 1920s and 1930s, or about his experience as a fighter pilot in the RAF during WWII in Egypt, Greece, and Palestine, or for anyone who just wants an interesting story about an interesting life, I'd highly recommend Boy and Going Solo.

Chapter One Hundred Eleven: The Ocean at the End of the Lane

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is fantasy author Neil Gaiman's most recent novel (or one of them--I had trouble in my brief search finding a chronological and up-to-date list of his publications).  I've been meaning to read it since it was published, and I finally had the time for it, and now I'm very glad I did.  It is not as heavy as, say American Gods felt to me at times, despite the fact that its plot is largely driven by a creepy and mysterious event buried deep in the narrator's past.  Gaiman does a great job in The Ocean at the End of the Lane at bringing in enough elements of fantasy to satisfy at least my appetite for the fantastical without causing any confusion about what he's describing.  (Again, this is unlike American Gods or Anansi Boys, which I enjoyed but in which I felt I was missing something due to my very shallow knowledge of mythology and folk tale characters.)  Still, if you don't like fantasy this probably isn't the book for you, grounded as it is in realistic-feeling descriptions of a boy's life in 1960s rural England.  The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a fairly fast-paced novel whose action is fairly quick to start, and it had no problem gaining and holding my interest, so if you want a fun little fantasy read, I'd heartily suggest it.

Chapter One Hundred Ten: The Lake

The Lake is a fairly short novel by Japanese author Banana Yoshimoto.  I've read some of her work before, for one of my undergrad classes, and I enjoyed it then, so when I came across some of her novels in the library, I thought I'd check one out.  While the plot and characters are interesting, I think my favorite aspect of the book is actually Yoshimoto's writing style, or at least how her writing has been translated into English.  (Not speaking Japanese, I can't compare it to the original, of course.)  Her prose is not simple, but very straightforward and direct, clean and purposeful.  I'm not sure I'm describing it well, but I really enjoy the way she just says things without any fuss.  Of course, the main characters in The Lake, a new couple in their twenties, are interesting themselves, with their own quirks and, in the case of one of them, a mysterious and traumatic past.  The slow unveiling of that past as their relationship progresses is the main plot element to this story, and when the mystery is finally revealed, it is done right--it isn't overblown or corny, but believable and matter-of-fact.  I found this novel to be a very interesting read, and if you're looking for contemporary, realistic fiction, this would be an excellent choice.

Chapter One Hundred Nine: Bossypants

I've been wanting to read Tina Fey's autobiography for a while now, because it looks hilarious.  I am happy to say that in this case, my expectations were exceeded: Bossypants had me totally engaged and even chuckling aloud at times.  And I should say that, which I have no problems with Tina Fey, I wouldn't say I'm a fan of her work (not that I don't like it--I just haven't bothered to watch it enough to form an opinion).  Even so, with hardly any knowledge of Fey at all, I still thoroughly enjoyed Bossypants and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a laugh and an interesting account of how someone normal ended up being famous.