Verbatim

I have to try to post reviews here as soon as I finish a book because by the time I get around to it months later … I can't remember much about the book. That said, here goes.

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

Amazon synopsis: 

Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as the protagonist in his own life: he’s merely Generic Asian Man. Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son, but always he is relegated to a prop. Yet every day, he leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. He’s a bit player here, too, but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guy—the most respected role that anyone who looks like him can attain. Or is it?

I regret that I was ultimately disappointed by this book, as it came highly recommended. It is extremely creative and clever, but it felt like a one-line gag that just went on too long. I lost interest long before I finished. There's a lot of good material here about being Asian, American, and/or Asian American, and all the stereotypes involved, but in the end I just felt that the switching off between straight narrative and TV show script didn't work for me. It felt like it was trying too hard to force important topics into a tricky format. 

The Martian by Andy Weir

Amazon synopsis:

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars.

Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there.

After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.

Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old "human error" are much more likely to kill him first.

But Mark isn't ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills—and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit—he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

I love-love-loved the movie The Martian when I saw it years ago (so much that I watched it once with the kids and then again later that day with Andy!). Several people had told me that the book was even better, and I finally got around to reading it recently. They were right! It's really funny and interesting and smart. Even knowing how it was going to turn out, it was still really fun and exciting to be there with Mark trying to get there. I'm not a huge science geek, but I wasn't bored at all by the technical descriptions. I felt like I was becoming a mini-expert on astrophysics, engineering, chemistry, and botany!

Topics of Conversation by Miranda Popkey

Amazon synopsis:

Composed almost exclusively of conversations between women—the stories they tell each other, and the stories they tell themselves—Topics of Conversation careens through twenty years in the life of an unnamed narrator hungry for experience and bent on upending her life. In exchanges about shame and love, infidelity and self-sabotage, Popkey touches upon desire, disgust, motherhood, loneliness, art, pain, feminism, anger, envy, and guilt. Edgy, wry, and written in language that sizzles with intelligence and eroticism, this novel introduces an audacious and immensely gifted new novelist.

Well, I don't know what I thought about this one. I definitely wanted to read to the end (even though it doesn't have anything like a plot, but consists of a series of scenes over the course of a few decades in the narrator's life), but I fell just short of enjoying it. The writing felt very contrived, and it some ways it was tedious to read. There were a few memorable moments and sentences, but all in all I didn't care a heck of a lot about the main character. I was waiting for something big to tie everything together, and (at least for me) it never came.

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Amazon synopsis: 

Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?

This was a fun, light read. It felt like a YA novel, which isn't a bad thing, but in this case it did mean that I knew exactly how it would end. We all wonder what would have happened if we had made different choices in our life, and in this book our young protagonist gets to find out. It's very sweet and clever but nothing earth-shattering for sure.

The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna by Juliet Grames

Amazon synopsis: 

For Stella Fortuna, death has always been a part of life. Stella’s childhood is full of strange, life-threatening incidents—moments where ordinary situations like cooking eggplant or feeding the pigs inexplicably take lethal turns. Even Stella’s own mother is convinced that her daughter is cursed or haunted.

In her rugged Italian village, Stella is considered an oddity—beautiful and smart, insolent and cold. Stella uses her peculiar toughness to protect her slower, plainer baby sister Tina from life’s harshest realities. But she also provokes the ire of her father Antonio: a man who demands subservience from women and whose greatest gift to his family is his absence.

When the Fortunas emigrate to America on the cusp of World War II, Stella and Tina must come of age side-by-side in a hostile new world with strict expectations for each of them. Soon Stella learns that her survival is worthless without the one thing her family will deny her at any cost: her independence.

I saved the best for last: I absolutely loved this one! It's a hefty book and I never once wanted to put it down. It definitely falls into the category of "sweeping saga," but my attention never flagged. Stella and the other main characters are really well drawn and believable, and the writing is extremely big-hearted and engaging throughout. As a review in the Washington Post said, the book "achieves what no sweeping history lesson about American immigrants could: It brings to life a woman that time and history would have ignored.” It's at times both heart-breaking and hilarious and I heartily recommend it!

For my next book group meeting, we're reading Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell. I haven't started it yet.

Have you read any of the books above? If so, what did you think? And if not, what have you been reading instead, and what do you recommend?