A New Favorite Author and "Shadow Tag"

I read some of Louise Erdrich's work in college and really liked her, so when I saw one of her novels at a used book store, it seemed logical to pick it up. Erdrich is part Native American, and her narratives always somehow involved the culture, whether it's a main focus or just subtly woven into the text as background. Her writing is beautiful, like poetry, her characters are hauntingly real, and the story is absolutely alluring, laced with humor and tragedy.
     Readers get a shockingly authentic view into a marriage that's clearly over, but Irene (the model wife) and Gil (the famous artist husband) aren't able to accept or confront what's right in front of them, using their obsession with each other as a form of denial. Irene ignores her husband's abuse-- towards her and towards their three children-- partly because of her dependence on alcohol. But the misery is countered by endearing moments that are falsely optimistic. Throughout the narrative, the children's disconnect with their parents and the traumatic effects of their parents' ruthless battles become more and more evident, and Irene's blindness to it just furthers a poignant insight that the daughter leaves readers with at the end (but I can't give away those words, because they'd give away too much of the ending).
Through the writer's tight focus on the family's grim drama, the doom and humor is conveyed in a way that make this novel completely tragic and beautiful, and easily made Erdrich one of my favorite writers.

Terrifying fiction: "The Shining" by Stephen King

This is another one of those novels that's also an iconic movie, so most people are already aware of it in one form or another. But it's also the typical case of the book being even better than the movie, if you can believe that. There are things that happen in the book that really wouldn't translate well into film, so those things are totally absent from the film adaptation. Don't get me wrong, I love the movie and I've watched it about a thousand times, but the book is even more chilling, more exciting, and more suspenseful. We get a little more background information on the family so it's easy to get invested, and even creepier to watch the father's descent into murderous insanity. We're also given a bit extra insight and detail about Danny's telepathic abilities, so it makes sense in a whole different way and plays a more significant role than the movie portrays.
     Before I read this, I didn't think it was really possible for a book to be scary. It's just a book, right? No big deal. But this one had me jumping at every little noise, locking the front door, and leaving the lights on all night. It's not just good because it's scary, it's good because the writing is good, the characters are genuine, and the story is a nuanced ghost story/ tale of insanity that readers had never seen until King released his third book to the world.

"Slaughterhouse Five"

Kurt Vonnegut's satirical anti-war novel is somehow hilarious and depressing at the same time. I read it in about two days and wished it would have lasted longer. Billy, the main character, is a POW in WWII who survives the Dresden bombing and recounts the atrocities he witnesses during the war with a light wit and straight-forward manner. Billy also inadvertently time travels, living and re-living events in the future and past out of sequence, describing his mundane future marriage, a plane crash he already knows he's going to be in, and time spent as a captive on an alien planet. (It doesn't read as crazy as it sounds).
     His time travel and the aliens' comments on the manner of humans raises existential questions in a very approachable way, that makes you think but isn't so complicated that it loses its entertainment value. This book has gotten ton of literary praise, and for good reason. It's considered an American classic, and has been called "the best book written in the 20th century." It might have also earned a place in my top 10 favorite books.

"Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" and not much else

Seth Grahame-Smith had the ingenious idea of combining a classic victorian novel with a science-fiction monster. A lot of people have asked me about this book and I hadn't read it, so I decided I should. But reading it was more tedious than trying to read the original "Pride and Prejudice." The ONLY thing this book has going for it is the novelty of throwing zombies into an austere Jane Austen novel. Zombie attacks are conducive to rich descriptions, vivid details, and intense action, but this book completely lacks all of those. The characters are unappealing and static, the plot is just as boring as it has always been. Reading it felt like a chore. Each zombie attack depicted (and there were a lot) all went like this: "The zombies grabbed their victims and started eating them." The next chapter, "The zombies grabbed their victims and started eating them." Each scene was shallow and lifeless (no pun intended).
     The author didn't exactly do a great job of blending the zombie motif in with the original novel, either. There are very odd asides that describe the Bennet girls' intense training in the Far East that lead them to become top zombie warriors. What? Poorly woven into the original plot and language, it just seems jarring and ridiculous. I couldn't get invested in the story at all, and I'm having trouble understanding how this book managed to become so popular.

A modern version of "Moby Dick"

"We, the Drowned" by Danish writer Carsten Jensen was just recently translated into English. It begins in 1849 and ends in 1945 just as WWII is coming to an end, and is centered around a small Danish sailing village, although a lot of it takes place at sea. With battles on the ocean, 2 world wars, cannibals, shrunken heads, foreign ports, mysterious women, love affairs, murderers, and epic journeys around the world, you'd think this book would be exciting. It's nearly 700 pages and split up into sections that are disconnected and seem to drag on and on, repeating the same stories of sailors going to sea and dying in a war or a storm that sinks their ship. The characters are completely flat and it's impossible to get invested in them; whenever a main character died, I didn't care. They lack personality and everything else that could make readers care about them.
     The worst part is, the very last section of the book including the ending is absolutely amazing. It's hard to believe that the incredible, beautiful end was written by the same person who wrote the rest of it. I kept thinking someone needs to chop off the last section and publish that separately, because then it would probably be one of my favorite books. But the other 550 pages are so tedious and redundant that, overall, this is one of the worst things I've read all year.

Don Delillo's "Cosmopolis"

Edgy, modern, and risqué, Delillo's novel has a unique style. It takes place mainly in the back of a limo making its way through Manhattan roughly during the course of one day. Eric Packer is a billionaire who encounters women that are just as sex-obsessed as he is, and everyone around him finds his charm (and money) irresistible. Except for one mentally-disturbed man who periodically cuts into the narrative with his manic, stream-of-consciousness ramblings and plots to kill Eric Packer. The limo Eric is riding in is super high tech and as they drive through the city they are constantly stalled by traffic jams caused by various unusual occurrences, so Eric jumps out of the limo several times to do whatever he feels like doing at the moment, and keeps running into his beautiful heiress wife. Throughout the course of the day he purposely makes poor investments, throwing more and more money away, which parallels the course of his downfall. Finally, he also purposely loses all his wife's money as well, to ensure his ruin. More strange occurrences and even stranger encounters bring the day-- and the novel-- to a close.
     I like the style of this novel, as well as its originality. It was interesting and ingenious, but not extremely exciting.
     The film adaptation of this book is in progress right now, so maybe you can wait and just see the movie. It's worth mentioning that Delillo has other novels that were critically acclaimed and very successful, including "White Noise." If his style sounds appealing to you but this book sounds a bit dull, try that novel.

"The Monsters of Templeton"

Lauren Groff needs to keep writing; this was her first novel and it's been successful with critics and readers. The story takes place in the fictional town of Templeton, where Willie Upton returns after having an affair with her professor, and then trying to run the professor's wife over with a small plane. Upon her return, a dead monster is discovered in the lake, bringing news crews and scientists to the town and leaving everyone totally baffled. In the midst of this, Willie's hippie mother decides to tell her that she's been lying all these years: Willie's father is not a hippie that her mother hooked up with once at a commune in California; he's a citizen of Templeton, and someone Willie knows. But that's as much as her mother will say, so Willie obsessively researches her family's history, going back to the founder of the town hundreds of years earlier, of whom she is a direct descendant.
     This story has tons of layers, twists, and lovable characters. Willie herself is flawed but endearing, and her interactions with her old high school classmates that she tries so hard to avoid are funny and memorable. Willie's mother is probably the best character, and adds a ton of humor, wit, and originality to the story. I appreciated the ending, which completely did justice to the rest of the novel. I hope Groff's next novel comes out soon.