Rules of Civility, by Amor Towles
Want to read a book with notes of The Great Gatsby, but without the annoying characters and male-centric plot? Then Rules of Civility may be the book for you! Set in the late 30s instead of the heady roaring 20s, the story focusses on one year in the life of the main character, Katey Kontent (Kontent, as in satisfied versus something contained), as she navigates her way around and through the New York social scene. The novel is as much a love letter to New York as it is an engaging story about a beautiful young woman gifted with fierce wit and determination (AND is a voracious reader, thank you very much!). I loved Towles’ writing, and will be picking up more of his books! 10/10
The Women, by Kristin Hannah
On the other hand … I can’t for the life of me understand why people loved this book. Yes, Kristin Hannah chose to write about women who served in Vietnam, when an entire country pretended that women Vietnam Vets did not exist, and kudos to her for that. And in a minor defense, the parts of the book that were specifically about serving in Vietnam were compelling, page-turning chapters. But OH. MY. GOD. then you had to put up with cheesy and implausible romance story lines!!
[warning: spoilers coming!! You could skip the next paragraph, or on the other hand, if you, too, were planning to waste a few hours of your life reading this book, let this be my way of giving you back the gift of time.]
While serving in Vietnam, the main character, Frankie, falls in love with a doctor at her med unit. Sure, sure, I get that. I’d probably fall in love too, in the middle of an insane war when I might die at any minute. But he turns out to be married and she’s too moral to sleep with him but she continues to be agonizingly in love with him until he dies while returning from R&R. Then she meets and falls in love with another soldier, the best friend of her brother (who has already died in combat). He also is married (well, rats) but it’s okay because he dies too, so moral dilemma avoided. Except … we soon learn that many, many solders in Vietnam were captured as POWs and their families were told they were dead when in fact they were imprisoned and being tortured for years. For real. Several years after the end of the war, many of these POWs were released, to the shock and joy of the families who had already buried them. In the book, guess who turns out to not be dead? BOTH OF THESE MEN!!! That’s right. By sheer good/bad luck, both of her married heartthrobs return home alive to be reunited with … their wives. This is supposed to be very emotional, but I may have missed the impact of that while I was in the bathroom barfing. 2/10
Bad Cree: A Novel, by Jessica Johns
So far, this is one of my favourite books from my Amnesty Book Club (the other is the Sleeping Car Porter). It’s a good ol’ supernatural horror story set in first nations culture, with a set of characters you actually care about and a theme of sisterhood, family, and enduring friendship. As a bonus for Canadians, it’s set partly in urban Vancouver and partly in rural Alberta. Jessica Johns originally wrote this as a short story for her creative writing class, but felt compelled to delve more deeply into some of the details she had to leave out of the short version. Despite centering around themes of supernatural and family tragedy, the book is an easy read with a wonderfully feel-good ending. 8/10, since this is a debut novel and I have to save room for her to grow into a 10/10.
Unnatural Creatures, stories selected by Neil Gaiman
All the necessary details of this collection of unusual stories is covered in the Nerdy Friends Book Club posts.
The Immortal King Rao: A Novel, by Vara Vauhini
I have a confession. This is the very first audio book I’ve ever listened to. I didn’t understand it (the plot of the book, not the narrator, who was actually quite soothing to listen to) and I attributed the lack of understanding to my lack of attention span – when I listen to podcasts, I’ll often realize my attention has drifted away and I end up back-tracking 30 or 60 seconds to the last point when I was tuned in. I assumed that the book suffered from this same mind-drift and that perhaps it was actually really good. Then I went to my Amnesty Book Club and discovered that the other two attendees also didn’t get it. One stopped reading after Chapter 5 out of boredom and confusion and the other finished it but didn’t get the point. So maybe it wasn’t a listening issue at all, but a writing one instead. It’s a strange book, that suffers from trying to tell too many stories without really connecting the reader with any of them, to the point where I couldn’t figure out what happened to the main character at the end and I didn’t really care. 2/10 for effort. Apologies if you loved it.
Aside: this is the second book this month that includes the qualifier “A Novel” in the title. Weird!
I have more, but I’m going to leave it here for now and just publish another blog next week.