The Only One Left by Riley Sager

Highly contrived series of coincidences and melodramatic prose style and sometimes so coincidental as to cause confusion.  

but not without its pleasures. 

The Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald

 So at the price of a little immersion in the family drains I had what I wanted. [105]

The Periodic Table by Primo Levi

 

May he have an accident shaped like an umbrella. [p. 13]

Finally reading this after owning it for almost 40 years. Collection of short "fictions" - first one, "Argon," while fascinating, is a completely off-putting journey through the narrator's family tree, mined with Yiddish and Hebrew words and puns. Started it several times and drowned in it as the first story. It's now more appealing to me, since I understand the central metaphor of the book -- and that argon, as one of the "inert" (noble/rare) gases, completely stands in for his distant relatives of whom he knew very little, except in scattered anecdotes and memories and phrases. 

The rest of the stories are marvelous and much less obscure - each concerns a chemical element in a fictional/fairy tale/historical setting.

"Nitrogen" is a strong example - about a lipstick manufacturer who hires young women as workers and insists on kissing each one eight times each morning to "test" the lipstick.

The concluding story, "Carbon," magnificently pulls it all together.

Camino Island by John Grisham

 

Solid but not great. I turned the pages dutifully, but the plot and milieu -- F Scott Fitzgerald manuscripts, small Southern seashore bookstores, the creative writing community --is a little nauseating.

Too poor to paint and too proud to whitewash.

Somebody's Fool by Richard Russo

Scratching my head on this. I love Russo's work, but don't really remember the first two FOOL novels, so this one isn't snapping into place. There is a sameness to his ironic tone that I'm finding deadening -- every character seems to hear the same omniscient sarcastic voice. Not moving me.

If Not Now, When? by Primo Levi

 

Mesmerizing, intricate, heavy novel about a band of Jewish partisans in Russia and Poland during the waning days of WWII.

Unbelievably moving account of the war winding down.

On the contrary, I believe it doesn't make much sense to say that one man is worth more than another. One man can be stronger than another but less wise. Or more educated but not so brave. Or more generous but also more stupid. So his value depends on what you want from him; a man can be very good at his job, and worthless if you set him to do some other job. [110]

Do you recognize us? We're the sheep of the ghetto,

Shorn for a thousand years, resigned to outrage.

We are the tailors, the scribes and the cantors,

Withered in the shadow of the cross.

Now we have learned the paths of the forest,

We have learned to shoot, and we aim straight. 

        If I'm not for myself, who will be for me?

        If not this way, how? And if not now, when?

Our brothers have gone to heaven

Through the chimneys of Sobibor and Treblinka,

They have dug themselves a grave in the air.

Only we few have survived

For the honor of our submerged people,

For revenge and to bear witness.

        If I'm not for myself, who will be for me?

        If not this way, how? And if not now, when?

We are the sons of David, the hardheaded sons of Masada.

Each of us carries in his pocket the stone

That shattered the forehead of Goliath.

Brothers, away from this Europe of graves:

Let us climb together towards the land

Where we will be men among men.

        If I'm not for myself, who will be for me?

        If not this way, how? And if not now, when?

Written by me, Martin Fontasch, about to die. Saturday 13 June 1943. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. [168]

[254]

[279]

The Confession by John Grisham

 

Couldn't put it down. Grisham has the thing, that knack for the last paragraph of each (short ish) chapter - he puts some torque on the story and you have to turn the page.

Rogue Lawyer by John Grisham

 

Another good one. I know a rogue lawyer. 

His philosophy: "Everyone’s awful, lawyers are the worst, cops are the second worst, criminals are kinda fun, I’m also the worst but also the greatest, so show me your tits."

They are entertaining and good company.

Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson

 

Finally read this after owning it for 20 years. More of a story than a poem. Based on myth but playing out in a contemporary setting in South America. 

Excellent and strange.

Going Zero by Anthony McCarten

Liked this. Recent novel about a contest sponsored by a digital surveillance company and the feds, they select ten random Americans and challenge them to "stay off the grid" and avoid detection for 30 days. 

Nova by Samuel R. Delaney

 

Wacky. Interesting. Got halfway through!

If This Is a Man/The Truce by Primo Levi

 

This book (two books, actually) is amazing, a take on concentration camps unlike any other I've read. Levi was an Italian Jew who went to Auschwitz for the last ten months of the war. The first volume, IF THIS IS A MAN, contains his sociological, often clinical descriptions of the prison camp industry is astounding, how even with almost nothing the prisoners still had a "thriving" economy of barter and favoritism which seemed, perversely, to keep the survivors sane as 90% of the other inmates disappeared into the crematoriums. Sane in spite of the sickness, the filth, the freezing temperatures, the backbreaking labor.

The second book, THE TRUCE, follows his circuitous journey home after liberation, a winding trail through Eastern Europe and Russia which took over a year.

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

 

Annie Dunne by Sebastian Barry

 

Another great one. Two single women in their 60s in western Ireland care for their grand-niece and nephew one summer, and suffer spiritual torpor. And enlightenment! Barry is a stunning prose stylist. There, I've said it again.

Looking at Pictures by Robert Walser

 

from "The Artist" --

He feels it, that’s all, and that’s how he finds it. He instantly separates the things of the highest importance from the unimportant ones, leaving everything extraneous or illusory to be what it will. He can gather his thoughts in a flash, his mind lucid, his consciousness alert. He is swift to discern what is not a matter of indifference, and for this reason always has both the inclination and cause to be of good cheer. His optimism waxes along with his predisposition to dispense with worry. When others ask: “What now?” and do not know the way forward, he has already found his own. He doesn’t see his path clearly, but also doesn’t consider this absolutely necessary; he strikes out in some direction or other, and one thing leads to the next. All paths lead to lives of some sort, and that’s all he requires, for every life promises a great deal and is replete with possibilities enchantingly fulfilled. He most certainly does not overtax his mind, and rightly so. Not everything needs to be puzzled out, and racking one’s brains does not necessarily result in cleverness. A higher power punishes us when we try to be more knowledgeable than befits us. What is fitting is to trust in ourselves and the world. Who feels this better than the artist? When he was poor, he believed more than ever in his abilities; when he began to grow weary, he was urged on more powerfully still by the image and idea that it is beautiful to pull oneself together. No one understands devotion to life, nor exhaustion, better than he, nor that Nature has willed it so, and that true industry and the heartfelt wish to produce work have their source in seasons of inertia. If this isn’t a natural growth process, what else can it be? Even the fruits of the field require time to grow; enough: he senses his fate, intuits the constraints and unconstrainedness of the destiny chosen for him and makes his peace with them. Does anyone know more vividly than he what it means to be utterly satisfied with oneself while at the same time being filled with numerous dissatisfactions? Both feelings lead him ever further on his path. Finding himself at a standstill once, it occurred to him to believe that all was nonetheless well with him; and when others gave voice to the opinion that he had lost his abilities, he made a point of showing what he was capable of in the loveliest light, giving the lie to the misconceptions of those who proved incapable of sound, calm judgment. He was always cautious when it came to believing or not believing in his journey, and this preserved him from both hubris and capitulation. When his modesty elicited condescension, he still did not falter in his belief that modesty was his bedrock. Space continued to favor him, time was well-disposed, and the world was as faithful to him as he was to it, and that was all he needed to continue in his development. Always he found talent to be intimately linked to joie de vivre, ability to gaiety, and craftsmanship to human flourishing, and he proceeded accordingly, with sometimes greater, sometimes lesser success and skill. If he failed at something, he did not cast it aside, but instead let it sit for a day, then examined it again, and since he returned to it, deeming it worthy of renewed attention, it proved to be serviceable. Over time, he learned to be patient and gentle, both in life and in his workshop. He owed his happiest hours to this circumstance. Once he was great; later, seeing himself diminished, he was on the point of feeling resentment, but the gift he possessed and his need to foster unity within himself prompted him to value even this smallness until such time as he could lift himself up again. As he sat in his room one evening, just as the bells were ringing and the streets filled with people looking forward to Sunday, he made his decision. No one who strives to bring new life to something significant should be too quick to abandon the hope that he will succeed in this endeavor, for that would be a shame; but as things are, all is well.

The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay

 

Doomsdayish, apocalyptic, dystopian novel, about two gay dads and their adoped Chinese daugter in remote New Hampshire, visited by four mysterious individuals who tell them the three must sacrifice one of the three or the world will end.  Tremblay did keep me reading, but the prose is a little overgrown with detailed descriptions of gestures and the air inside the cabin and the way blood appears, etc.

The Wrecking Crew by Kent Hartman

 

Randy: The Full and Complete Unedited Biography and Memoir of the Amazing Life and Times of Randy S. by Mike Sacks

 

If I read a stupid book, does that make me stupid too?

Angels & Demons by Dan Brown

 

Ridiculously bald melodramatic writing style covers a hyperactive conspiracy plot over the course of about 24 hours. Still, the wealth of historical detail is pleasing.  Brown would make a great tour guide of Vatican City and Rome.

Science itself created half the problems it was trying to solve.

I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home by Lorrie Moorer

 

The car sped forward. Glued to the windshield, in the form of the rearview mirror, was a little landscape painting of the very recent past. [122]

But nothing was Lily's home, though he did not say this. It was not her fault that her sudden hectic love was always like that- a flash mob that emerged from nowhere, a dance that twisted out of anonymous movement, then receded back into the crowd, which was sometimes shouting, "The whole world is watching" and sometimes "Free Barabbas." [135]

Damnably unsatisfactory novel. Moore's sentences, as regularly described, are jewel-like: hilarious and bracing and perceptive. I could read them infinitely. But the stories - if I can call them that - go nowhere: a present tense narrative about a trouble relationship between a man and his suicidal female partner, who seems to die early but won't go away (or shut up), and a historical narrative conveyed in a couple of letters from a woman to her (dead?) sister, in the aftermath of the civil war. The man in the present tense seems to find a copy of the Civil War correspondence, but that's it for resonance, as far as I could tell. And the present tense tale of the man driving his (dead?) wife across the country in a car also falls flat. Or maybe I'm just bitchy. 

Anyway, endless quotable sentences. I'd pull some out and type them up here, but there are a dozen on every page. Lorrie Moore is something else.