S: The Stranger, The Space Between Us, & Suits

The Stranger by Albert Camus
Genre: literary

It was written in French. I’m recommending Matthew Ward’s translation, done in 1988 or so (as opposed to what I believe was the more common translation, done by an Englishman in the late 1940s). I think the publisher’s description best sums it up: An ordinary man unwittingly gets drawn into a senseless murder on a sundrenched Algerian beach.
 
How it starts: "Maman died today. Or yesterday, maybe. I don’t know."

It’s relatively rare that I come to a classic as an adult, without it already having been ruined for me because I had to write a paper on it for a teacher who saw all sorts of things in it that I didn’t. But I found this book to be more interesting than many classics. At least, until it was “reinterpreted” for me at my book club meeting as representing Albert Camus’ relationship with the philosophy of existentialism (though I’ve since found out that Camus strongly refuted this idea). But I recommend it anyway, as a fascinating story in its own right. This is not a particularly likable protagonist, so if that’s important to you, you should probably skip it. But the way events spiral is, to me, a mark of good storytelling.

The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar
Genre: general fiction

The Space Between Us centers around Sera, an upper middle class housewife of an abusive husband, and Bhima, a poor woman who has worked in Sera’s household for over twenty years. A life-changing event connects the two of them, and they're forced to make choices they never imagined. The story is set in Bombay, India (Or Mumbai, if you’re below a certain age).

For most of the world outside Europe and the USA, having household staff seems to be the norm, and the relationships between people who know each other as well as family but are most definitely not family is complicated and sometimes painful.

Suits
Genre: Television

This is a fairly new show – the second season will be on television in June. Basic premise: Mike Ross has a photographic memory, and since being kicked out of law school, mostly makes a living by illegally taking the LSAT for people. While doing an (also-illegal) favor for a friend, he stumbles into a job interview for a prestigious law firm, and impresses the attorney so much that he’s offered the job, even though they both know the firm only takes Harvard grads.

So far the show is doing a lot less with Mike’s photographic memory (which was what attracted me to it to begin with) and a lot more with the web of lies he and his boss have spun. Still, I’m looking forward to the second season.

Awesome tag line: "Two lawyers. One degree." And Gina Torres (Zoe from Firefly) plays a founding partner of the law firm. J

R: Ready Player One

I don’t remember the actual 1980s, but where I grew up must have been a little behind the times, because I totally got the nostalgia factor of this book.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Genre: SF

In Ready Player One, it's 2044, and the road to riches is paved with '80s trivia - books, movies, music, and of course, arcade games. It's also peppered with modern geekery like Firefly and World of Warcraft, and namechecks classic and modern authors like Heinlein and Scalzi. Even if you've never heard of Duran Duran, or have no idea what a Commodore 64 is, you'll still be fascinated by how much pop culture Cline can cram into a fast-paced plot.

General premise An eccentric billionaire named Halliday creates a virtual reality universe and hides an Easter egg (one of many video-game terms explained in the book) on one of thousands of virtual planets. In a video clip that enthralls the world, he leaves his $240 billion fortune to the first person who solves all the clues, survives all the quests, claims all three keys, and finds the prize. The announcement video is a collage of clips from John Hughes movies and '80s music videos, a clue in itself.

Wade Watts, an orphan living in the crime-ridden, global-warmed, poverty-stricken post-apocalyptic future, is the first gunter (short for egg-hunter) to win the Copper Key, level one of the three-level quest. Overnight, he becomes a celebrity.

His achievement draws the attention of IOI, villains in the form of corporate gamers. Honest gunters have to know the trivia and solve the clues themselves, while braving dangers typical of FPS games. The cheating IOI employees, also known as Sux0rz, use proprietary software that allows them to work in groups as well as share knowledge, weapons and armor. This way (and unlike for everyone else), their avatars never really die.

IOI tries to recruit Wade, bringing his avatar to their blinged-out planet (even virtual riches cost real money) to impress him with offers of untold wealth. When Wade refuses, they come after him in the real world, intent on eliminating him so he doesn't win the money first. Wade is suddenly on the run in real life, complicating his ability to logon and continue his quest.

Much like with An Abundance of Katherines and The Black Prism, for months after reading Ready Player One I recommended it to anyone who spoke to me for more than three minutes. It has everything - evil villains who will stop at nothing, unrequited love, people who aren't what they seem to be online, and a bright but lonely boy who must find his prize before his enemies find him.

Q: All the Queen's Men

All The Queen’s Men by Linda Howard
Genre: romantic suspense

Linda Howard is an immensely popular writer - as you can tell from the size of her name vs the name of the book. Like many famous genre women (Janet Evanovich, Nora Roberts/JD Robb, etc), she started out in Romance (the only genre where, traditionally, being female wasn’t an obstacle to getting published), and eventually shifted into her own niche. She was a charter member of Romance Writers of America. Her first book was published in 1980, and she’s been pretty prolific – she has over fifty books in print, and a ton of short stories.

Linda Howard will always be one of my favorite authors, though for me, her last few books (entertaining as they were) don’t have quite the same unique freshness of most of the books she wrote in the late ‘90s through about 2007 or so. She seems to be moving into paranormals, though, so maybe she just got bored. She’s still an incredibly skilled storyteller, and I’ll still buy any suspense she writes, just in case that special spark comes back.

Anyway!

General premise The last time Niema Burdock met John Medina, she and her husband were part of John’s team on a CIA Black Ops mission to Iran. It went terribly wrong, Niema’s husband was killed, and afterwards Niema transferred to a stateside desk job.

Even though John is sure Niema blames him for her husband’s death, he can’t help keeping tabs on her. When he’s assigned to stop a French arms dealer who is supplying terrorists, he insists Niema is the only communications expert with the background and skills to help him infiltrate the dealer’s circle and plant surveillance bugs…

All The Queen’s Men is my favorite of Howard’s books. I liked the hero, the heroine, and the villain. But I would also recommend Up Close and Dangerous (a sabotaged private plane crashes on a snow-covered mountainside in the middle of nowhere), Cover of Night (the bad guys decide to hold up an entire “frontier” town), and White Lies (this is kind of an older one, so the hero is a bit, um, harsh, but the concept, far-fetched as it was, was well-executed).

P: The Pillars of the Earth & Prison Break

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Genre: historical

Calling this an unusual book is a bit of an understatement. Ken Follett was already immensely popular for his political thrillers. And then he changed tracks, bringing everything about his previous books (fast-paced suspense, a deep understanding of human nature, unflinching violence, intricate political and family intrigue) to a book about building a 12^th century cathedral. It's been on bestseller lists ever since. Who would have thought?

I’ll quote the Goodreads description:

This book tells the tale of a twelfth-century monk driven to do the seemingly impossible: build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has ever known.

Everything readers expect from Follett is here: intrigue, fast-paced action, and passionate romance. But what makes The Pillars of the Earth extraordinary is the time—the twelfth century; the place—feudal England; and the subject—the building of a glorious cathedral. Follett has re-created the crude, flamboyant England of the Middle Ages in every detail. The vast forests, the walled towns, the castles, and the monasteries become a familiar landscape. Against this richly imagined and intricately interwoven backdrop, filled with the ravages of war and the rhythms of daily life, the master storyteller draws the reader irresistibly into the intertwined lives of his characters—into their dreams, their labors, and their loves: Tom, the master builder; Aliena, the ravishingly beautiful noblewoman; Philip, the prior of Kingsbridge; Jack, the artist in stone; and Ellen, the woman of the forest who casts a terrifying curse. From humble stonemason to imperious monarch, each character is brought vividly to life.

The building of the cathedral, with the almost eerie artistry of the unschooled stonemasons, is the center of the drama. Around the site of the construction, Follett weaves a story of betrayal, revenge, and love, which begins with the public hanging of an innocent man and ends with the humiliation of a king.

At once a sensuous and endearing love story and an epic that shines with the fierce spirit of a passionate age, The Pillars of the Earth is without a doubt Ken Follett's masterpiece.

Prison Break

Genre: television

Lincoln Burroughs, already a felon with a lengthy record, is accused of murdering the vice president’s brother and incarcerated at Fox River Penitentiary. The evidence is clear (fingerprints on the gun, surveillance video, bloody clothes), and his execution is fast-tracked through the system. His younger brother, Michael Scofield (a brilliant, successful, and squeaky-clean structural engineer), believes Burroughs is innocent and is being framed for the murder of someone many high-powered people wanted to kill.

So Scofield comes up with an elaborate plan to break his brother out of prison, has the plans (and the blueprint for the state penitentiary) worked into a tattoo that covers his entire upper body – and then holds up a bank and discharges a weapon, to ensure that he ends up in the same place as his brother.

Because one can't have too
many pictures of
Wentworth Miller. :)

This show has some of the best antagonists/villains I’ve ever seen. I love John Abruzzi the crime boss (played by Peter Stormare), and Robert Knepper does an amazing job as Theodore “T-Bag” Bagwell. I love how Scofield’s ridiculously well-laid plans keep taking left turns as he meets up with real-world complications, and as the number of people breaking out of prison with him gets larger and larger.

This show has many things I eat up in fiction – ensemble cast, politics, intrigue, humor, wit, and super-smart people on opposite sides of the same issue. It won a stack of awards while it was on air. The second and third seasons were filmed in Texas. Lots of celebrity sightings around here. J

O: One Dance with a Duke

Time for a romance novel!

One Dance With A Duke by Tessa Dare

Genre: Regency romance

General premise Spencer Dumarque, the handsome and mysterious Duke of Morland, is also known as “the duke of midnight”. He shows up at balls right at that hour, asks one of the young debutantes to dance (usually a gorgeous teenager awed into silence by his presence), and then escorts her in to dinner and disappears. Unlike her younger friends of marriageable age (and their mothers), Amelia d’Orsay isn’t impressed. Page 4 quote: “What other ladies saw as intriguing and romantic, she took for self-indulgent melodrama. Really, an unmarried, wealthy, handsome duke who felt the need to command more female attention?”

This time, though, when the duke arrives at the ball and reaches out for the girl next to her, Amelia grabs his hand, seizing the opportunity to spend several uninterrupted minutes with him so she can insist he forgive her brother’s gambling debts. This leads to a heated conversation on the patio, the arrival of unexpected bad news, and a midnight ride away from the ball. The next morning, the duke finds himself accused of the murder of an acquaintance, and (much to her chagrin) Amelia finds herself engaged to the arrogant duke to avoid scandal following their midnight disappearance.

Despite my love of Regency romances, the two most common “hero-types” in the sub-genre irritate me. That’s probably a charitable way of putting it. Anyway, there’s the brooding duke (the superior, rude, rich guy hiding a dark past and a heart of gold) and the romancing rake (the witty, handsome, ne’er-do-well who sleeps with lots of willing, attractive widows/actresses and is constantly in and out of trouble and gambling halls, but becomes monogamous and angelic once he meets his virginal true love).

Generally when I love a Regency romance, it’s because the love interest doesn’t fit either of these tired and tiresome tropes. Oddly enough, Spencer Dumarque definitely fits brooding duke-mode. But because we’re in his point of view for parts of the book, we know why he’s that way fairly early on, and it makes all the difference in the world for me. Not to get all spoilery, but when he finds out from Amelia that society views his midnight dance as the height of social excitement and mystique, his response is pure astonishment. But you’ll have to read the book to find out why he does the midnight dance. J

One Dance with a Duke is the first book of the Stud Club series. Yes, the name is a wink and nod for us modern readers, but the stud in question is actually a legendary stud horse called Osiris. The founder of the club is a popular member of society (genuinely liked by everyone because he’s thoughtful and friendly as well as rich, good-looking and well-connected) who created ten brass tokens giving access to this horse. The tokens can only be won, not bought, creating all sorts of excitement as men gamble for these tokens. The series is built around solving the mystery of who murdered the club founder.

History, mystery, romance, and horses. Works for me!

The Night Circus

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Genre: literary/magical realism
 

Celia and Marco have trained their entire lives for an epic duel set up by their instructors, and the black-and-white Night Circus is the magical battle field. Despite their growing love for each other, leaving the fight is physically impossible, and only one of them can win.

This is one of very few books I've read that hurtled towards such a terrible ("terrible" as in "depressing", not "badly-written") end that I couldn't even begin to imagine how the author would resolve it. And then she did, and it wasn't tragic or ridiculous or eye-roll-inducing. It just made perfect sense. The world-building was amazing. And the magic seems to have no discernible rules, and yet feels completely believable.

The Night Circus is…enchanting. There’s a magical quality to the writing that fits the story and makes it all feel otherworldly. I hesitate to say too much, because the beauty of this book is so specific. It’s not going to appeal to everyone, but it will probably appeal strongly to the people who like it. I think it deserves the accolades, but as evidenced by Goodreads and other places where people write reviews, many people read the accolades first, assumed it would be like other books that have made waves in recent years, and then read it and thought, “Really? This?”

So I highly recommend this book, but no description is going to be quite right. It’s set in the late Victorian era for the most part, but it’s not really about historical or steampunk elements. It’s got magic in it, but it wouldn’t fit on a fantasy shelf. We watch Celia and Marco grow up, but it’s not a coming-of-age novel. It’s just beautiful, absorbing, and wholly its own story.

Tangent: I've heard a lot about the tortured artists who supposedly make up the bulk of the writing world, the people who suffer for their craft and whatnot. I have to say Erin Morgenstern is my idea of what a writer would be if I were making one up. She's quirky and adorable and takes cool pictures and says cool things and does cool stuff. Authors tend to be very...normal. Which is not at all surprising. It just doesn't fit with the popular narrative. Oscar Wilde and J.D. Salinger and the like were so unusual that they've come to define what people picture when they think "writer". I'd rather picture people like Morgenstern.

In a recent blog post, she wrote this passing comment:

 

In two hotel rooms on my tour the concierge left a bottle of wine and two glasses. I still cannot decide if it would be more or less depressing to have a single glass. Which one is a harsher reminder that you’re alone?

Something about that comment reminded me of how I felt while reading portions of her book. It made me smile, it made me think, and it made me sad.

M: Mistakes Were Made (but not by me) & Mirror Of Her Dreams

Mistakes Were Made (but not by me) by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson
Genre: nonfiction, psychology

Just looking at this book makes me want to read it again. The subtitle describes it better than any description I can come up with: "Why we justify foolish beliefs, bad decisions, and hurtful acts".

Written by two psychologists, it delves into all sorts of reasons why people dig in and defend beliefs or opinions even when they're clearly wrong and everyone involved knows it (e.g. why law enforcement officials might continue to insist someone is guilty or innocent because they originally labeled them as such, or why politicians make excuses and tell lies even when the amount of attention being paid is so intense that it’s only a matter of time until the truth comes out). It has chapter names like "Knaves, Fools, Villains, and Hypocrites: How Do They Live with Themselves?", "Cognitive Dissonance: The Engine of Self-justification", and "Pride and Prejudice...and Other Blind Spots".

This is a book I can safely recommend to everyone. It's easy to read, it's fascinating, and you'll never approach disagreement (or your own memory) in quite the same manner again.

The Mirror of Her Dreams by Stephen R. Donaldson

Genre: fantasy

Terisa Morgan lives in a fabulous New York apartment paid for by her neglectful-yet-overbearing father. When Geraden comes crashing through her wall-sized mirror looking for a champion to save his land, he insists she's the one he came to get.

This is one of my favorite books. It bucks the current (and I must say, IMO, very American) trend of super-active single-protagonist books. I know we like to read about people doing things and taking control of their own destiny...but there are other stories, too. Terisa spends most of the story being dragged into things she would never have done if given a choice, and it makes her story no less fascinating for me. I like books about cautious introverts. They're so rare in fiction now. Every time I hear that a recently-published book has an introvert for a protagonist, I know in a few pages that character will just turn out to be an extrovert who was having a quiet day and soon shakes it off.

http://aliettedebodard.com/2011/08/31/on-the-prevalence-of-us-tropes-in-storytelling/

This blog post is by Aliette de Bodard, winner of the Writers of the Future Contest, finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer , nominated for the Hugo and the Nebula, etc etc. She states what I feel (perhaps more strongly than I feel it), but in short, there are lots of valid stories out there. I remember feeling such relief as I read her post, because for many years now I'd feared the world had moved on without me.

I'm happy reading stories about individuals who control their own destiny, people who save the day, people who lead. But I'm also happy reading group stories, stories of people who aren't immediately equipped to deal with what life throws at them, stories where violence has lasting consequences for everyone involved, stories where someone isn't becoming a larger-than-life superhero in order to deal with problems. There's room for all of it on my bookshelf!

Think of the movie Training Day. His first day on the job as a narcotics officer, Jake (Ethan Hawke) is assigned to accompany Alonzo (Denzel Washington), and what follows is the most horrifying day of Jake’s life. Despite the awards they won (Denzel won best actor, Ethan Hawke best supporting actor), from a storytelling point of view, it’s Jake’s story we’re invested in, his thoughts, fears, and decisions that are the focus of the story, which makes him the protagonist. He spends most of the movie being dragged into things by Alonzo. I'm not sure he makes a single active decision until near the end of the movie. And yet it's one of the most thrilling, edge-of-my-seat movies I've ever seen.

I want more stories like that. Because while I’m entertained by people who always rise to the occasion, say the wittiest possible thing and do the best possible thing to resolve the current situation, I identify better with someone who’s overwhelmed by situations they’re not equipped to deal with, and have to muddle through solving problems, sometimes with the help of other people. As long as it’s written well, I see no reason why every single action that moves the story forward has to be the protagonist’s.

And that's it for M!