April Books

This morning, as I was getting dressed for work, I grabbed my pair of black tights.  May 1st, I thought to myself.  May 1st and I'm still wearing tights.

Wacky weather (where are those 80 degree days we had in March?) aside, another month has come to a close and somehow, amazingly, we're a solid four months into 2012.  I know, I don't understand it myself. 

Just as the calendar moves itself along, so do the books in my never-ending 'to-read' queue.  I only finished two in April, mainly because I was also reading a Anne Lamont's writing guide Bird By Bird (which I'm about ten pages away from finishing) along side these novels...and because one of the books I chose to read nearly sucked the life out of me completely.  More on that in a moment.

And Now You Can Go - Vendela Vida

 I had read another of Vida's books a few years back,  Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, and loved it.  In fact, I bought And Now You Can Go off the remainder table only a few months after reading her other one...and then took approximately four years to get around to reading it.  While I didn't like this one quite as much as Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, I enjoyed the premise of the novel much more than I'd anticipated.  Our story opens in New York City, where the main character, Ellis, is held up at gun point.  We follow her from that moment on, through the next 300-odd pages, watching as she deals with the repercussions - sometimes hilarious, other times terrifying, of that incident in the park.  This book was extremely fast-paced and before I knew it, I'd finished the thing.  My favorite part of the story - the moment I wanted to last forever - was the trip Ellis takes with her mother after the holidays.  If you've read it, you know what I'm talking about and if you haven't, well, perhaps you'll remember this post if and when you ever do get around to reading this book.  Those few chapters felt the most poignant and heartfelt and I came to love both Ellis and her mother more than I'd ever anticipated I would. 

It is worth mentioning that Ms. Vida is married to author Dave Eggers, of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (loved it ten years ago, curious if I'd feel the same way today if I re-read it) and I have a bit of a crush on the lifestyle I've romanticized in my head for them.  Two successful, attractive authors, who also give back to the community, and live in Northern California? I'll take it. 


Those Who Save Us - Jenna Blum

I don't know what it is about WWII historical fiction and my choices, but lately I seem to be busy weeding out all of the duds.  Not that Those Who Save Us didn't sound promising.  Weaving between present (1997) day where Trudy, a professor of German history, longs to learn more about her mother's secretive past and 1940's Germany, where we learn the real story of Anna (Trudy's mother) who is a young German woman living in war-torn Europe, doing her best to survive the war along with her young daughter, even if it means risking her life to help with the resistance and later being forced to play the role of a Nazi officer's mistress.  Interesting premise, right? We hardly ever see books written from the German citizen's perspective.  But.  Dear Lord, this book was almost 600 pages...which was about 500 pages too long, in my humble opinion.  I knew after about 60 pages the writing style was not to my taste, and I don't know why I insisted on continuing to read the thing beyond just really, really wanting to finish it.  I knew if I didn't keep churning through the book, I'd see it at the bookstore some day and be haunted by the thought that maybe - just maybe - it would have turned around by the end if only I'd kept with it.

Not the case.  It's not that it didn't have some interesting moments, but oh, enough with the flowery language, already!  If I'd been the editor in charge of this tomb I'd have left about 200 pages on the cutting room floor.  Seriously, this book just went on and on and on, with partially developed characters, weird plot twists, and well, suffice it to say, I was very, very glad when I - finally! - read the last page.  My reward (for perseverance?) was being able to toss the darn thing on to my 'sell it back to the bookstore' pile.  Immediately. 

April, as it turns out, was not my greatest reading month.  But those things happen sometimes, right?  The good news is I've got the whole entire month of May ahead of me.  And the books are ripe for the picking.