It’s been one of those head-spinningly busy weeks where putting effort into a real blog is a bridge waaaaaay too far – the very last thing on earth I want to do. Today was spent poring over financial documents, getting said documents notarized at the U.S. embassy here in London, signing said documents, scanning said documents into a digital file (160 pages worth), forwarding the file to the realty/legal/loan folks back in the USA, toting paper documents to FedEx for overnight delivery – oh, never mind.
We closed on a house in the States today after a month of pain and agony, so….Yippee!
Anyway…
It’s the perfect week to publish a book blog I’ve had saved up for this very purpose. Less effort – same high quality!
These are books that have recently made their way through my reading list. They aren’t really reviews. Just short snapshots of what the books are about, and maybe a nugget or two about my reaction to them. If you’re a big reader, maybe you will find them useful.
Also: It’s a way to pimp my own books. So fair warning……
A Wild Sheep Chase, Haruki Murakami: Lately I’ve been on this run of books that feature good writing, interesting characters – and plots that either leave me lost or wondering what the point is. This 1982 novel from the famed Japanese author falls into the former category. The book can’t seem to make up its mind what it wants to be – a mystery, a meditation, a dive into the human psyche, a fantastical trip into the world we can’t see just on the other side of reality.
The writing was just absorbing enough to keep me turning the pages, but when I finished reading it I still wasn’t sure what it was about. Yes, there is a sheep, and yes, the narrator, who works in advertising, tries to chase down this sheep. But is it really a sheep? Or just a product of someone’s imagination? Does the narrator really do all the things he says he does? Oh, I don’t know. I did get a chuckle over how many times the author used the term “intercourse” to describe sex. As in, “We ate salmon, then we had intercourse.” Somehow, this cracked me up.
Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta, James Hannaham. Carlotta is a Black transgender woman who just got out of prison for her role in a murder a couple decades ago (she had nothing to do with it other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time). She returns to a very changed Brooklyn during the 2010s. The borough has been taken over by gentrification, cutesy cafes and boutiques, and a bunch of earnest Caucasian faces that weren’t in this neighborhood two decades ago. Carlotta is on a mission to build a relationship with her estranged son, Ibe, who is around 19 or 20 now. Ibe was just an infant when Carlotta was his father and got sent off to prison. Now Carlotta presents as a woman, and of course this takes some getting used to for Ibe.
Carlotta reconnects with family and an old friend, and spends her time trying to avoid the kind of trouble that will land her back in the pokey. It ain’t easy. This is an often-hilarious book whose main character is fascinating and wholly original. The problem is, the story doesn’t really go anywhere. It’s just Carlotta doing this and that for a few days, written in a stream-of-consciousness style that goes back and forth between the third-person narrator and Carlotta’s first-person thoughts. I still found it entertaining enough, though.
KOP, Warren Hammond: A futuristic crime/sci-fi thriller set on a colonized planet called Lagarto in the late 2700s. The protagonist is Juno, a Lagarto native who becomes a cop whose main job is to act as an enforcer for the corrupt police department. He spent most of his time on the vice beat, but was transferred into the homicide division to investigate a murder that could have wide political ramifications. This book includes the usual crime fiction staples (cynical detective, beautiful fellow detective, sketchy power players, violent street thugs) but it’s a fun read that moves quickly. I’d recommend it.
They Called Us Enemy, George Takei. Takei is an actor and activist best known for playing Hikaru Sulu in the original “Star Trek” TV series. He is also a Japanese-American born in California whose family was rounded up and put in Japanese internment camps by the U.S. government during World War II. This book is a 2019 graphic novel account of that experience, co-written by Justin Eisinger and Steven Scott and illustrated by Harmony Becker.
Japanese internment camps represented another low-water mark in U.S. history because they essentially amounted to imprisoning thousands of U.S. citizens for several years – kids, grandparents and all – simply because the country of their ancestors was an enemy during the war. Funny, but there were no Italian or German internment camps during World War II. It really all comes down to good old racism. This book does a good job recounting the experience and the injustice behind it.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz: This 2007 debut novel by Dominican-American author Diaz earned a whole galaxy of awards, winning the National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. New York magazine named it Best Novel of the Year. Diaz certainly has a lot of writing chops, and he puts them all on display in this sometimes engaging, sometimes confounding tale that follows several generations of the fictional De Leon family from the DR to New Jersey and back.
When the author drills down into the life of Oscar Wao (real name Oscar De Leon), the book sucks you into its orbit and keeps you there. But too often you are snatched out of that orbit and into some whole other backstory and character POV, while Diaz bangs you over the head with his bag of writerly tricks: street slang, footnotes, random author interruptions, sexcapades, a dizzying back-and-forth between English/Spanish/English/Spanish, and forays into Dominican culture, history, and voodoo (I wish he had forayed into Dominican food, which is delicious).
I spent part of the novel mesmerized, part of it lost, and part of it wanting to rush through the pages to get back to the good stuff. The good stuff mainly involves Oscar, a bright, nerdy, aspirational, overweight, hopelessly romantic and heartbreaking kid who loves sci-fi, gaming, and girls. He’s a beautifully written character who you pull for in the worst way, knowing that things probably won’t turn out good for him (see: the book’s title). The other characters range from mildly engaging to downright annoying (like the narrator).
Footnote: In the novel, Oscar is a dark-skinned Dominican, which turned out to be one of the strikes against him. The cover has an image of a light-skinned kid. This bothered me more than I can tell you.
The Axeman’s Jazz, Ray Celestin: Have you ever read a book that you mostly like but also kinda want to end? This is one of those books. It’s a likeable enough mystery set in New Orleans in 1919, when a real-life serial killer calling himself the Axeman murdered about a dozen people and wrote letters to the city newspaper, the Times-Picayune, bragging about it.
This 2014 debut novel has a lot to recommend it, including a cast of interesting characters and some first-rate descriptions of the Big Easy during the dawn of the Jazz Age. But it’s easy to get lost in the plot with so many characters involved, each with their own theory about the Axeman. I’m still confused after reading the novel’s 425 pages.
Also: Why does the author spell Louis Armstrong “Lewis” Armstrong? The legendary jazz trumpeter is one of the main characters, and every time I read “Lewis” my brain ached.
The Axeman’s Jazz is the first in a quartet of city blues mysteries written by Celestin, and I plan to read the others as well. Overall, I liked the first installment. But hopefully the plots in the others are a little tighter and easier to navigate.
Voodoo Hideaway, Vance Cariaga. If you order this fine debut novel with elements of crime noir and sci-fi, you will make me happy. Which will make you happy! For reviews, hit this link.
Here’s how to order it:
Money, Love and Blood, Vance Cariaga: If you order this collection of short stories, you will be happy – because you made me happy! Order it here.
Vance Cariaga 