Five Days at Memorial

Five Days at Memorial

By Sheri Fink

This was an incredibly gripping book on the doctors, nurses, and patients at Memorial Hospital in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent investigation into the numerous deaths there and accusations that patients were being euthanized (just as rescue helicopters were evacuating people again).  It's less concerned about pointing fingers or assigning blame than it is in warning how American social mores and patient care practices can break down in less than five days and how it might be prevented (or likely to occur) in the future.

Do I think that Dr. Anna Pou and her two assistants murdered at least nine and potentially eighteen patients? Yes.  Am I going to second guess her actions? Probably not.  However, although I was sympathetic to the conditions in Memorial (and in fact, all over the city, as this was not the only facility facing "suspicious" concentrations of morphine and midazolam in the bodies left behind), and I understand that the potential murder charges hang over her head, what I most aggrieved by was the complete lack of remorse, guilt, or doubt expressed by them and by their supporters after the fact.  Yes, you did what you thought was right at the time, and I don't doubt that you were despairing, after five days in post-Katrina conditions, fear, rumors, and foul smells, but when you left that hospital and realized that help had been available, that not everyone descended into chaos and death, I think that should have given you pause.  You made a mistake.  And it was life or death, and you chose poorly.  Face it.

It was only as we near the end of the book and you realize that not only did she have tunnel vision at the time, she's become entrenched into her position that I lost my sympathy for her.  Maybe it's a defensive mechanism to avoid having to examine her own actions more closely, but Fink's argument that this attitude of refusing other perspectives in end-of-life decisions can cause more harm than it purports to solve is a fairly persuasive one. There's a good argument that doctors, unfortunately, are human like the rest of us - (over)confident in their own skills, brought low by disaster, unending work and stress, and, while willing to make the "hard" decisions, unwilling to open that decision to criticism.  Of course, other actors in the justice process fucked up too, and maybe it could have been an opportunity for a discussion, but instead the whole indictment just screwed everybody over. This review is a bit longer than intended, and the book is no novella either, but it's worth a read.

A Seal at Heart

A Seal at Heart

By Anne Elizabeth

Being a Navy SEAL means everything to John "Red Jack" Roaker, but a mission gone wrong has left his buddy dead, his memory spotty, and his world turned upside down.  His career as a SEAL is threatened unless Dr. Laurie Smith's unconventional methods of therapy can help him.

Laurie's father was a SEAL - and she knows exactly what the personal cost can be.  She can't resist trying everything to help this man, and not only because she finds him as sexy as he is honorable.

As the layers of Jack's resistance peel away, he and Laurie unearth secrets that go to the highest levels of the military - and the deepest depths of their hearts.

I have the worst time reading romances: I always think they're going to be better than they are, and I end up disappointed and aggravated.  I think I read like, two good "traditional" style romances, and ever since then I am the eternal optimist.  I didn't even finish the last one I tried, An Extraordinary Union, which was like, on every top ten list.  I got forty pages in, thought to myself: "What a load of shit," and sent it back.  I did manage to finish A Seal at Heart, but that was mostly because of the challenge, and not because I enjoyed it any more.  It just drives me crazy when they do that "instant attraction" shit, and then decide to upend their whole lives because of someone they've known a day.  You know what's sexy? Getting to know someone!  Outside of the inside of their vagina, that is.  I read some Suzanne Brockman thing a while back and going along okay until the guy SEAL was like, "You know what SEAL stands for? SEa! Air! Land! The best of the best!" and I was thinking, "Sea, air, and land spell SAL, calm your fucking tits." The machismo can blow me. 

This one also had several things that were just not to my taste, including the idea that it's okay to fuck your physical therapist because "they don't have the same rules as doctors" and that great fallback of the accidental pregnancy with someone you had a falling out with.  Although this one was briefly redeemed for not actually being a pregnancy, merely womb hysteria, it sank again what with the fact that Laurie gets fucking punched to unconsciousness merely because she's trying to get her boyfriend and ersatz father to quit fucking fighting.  She's like, oh, let's just drop it, the military have it so rough when they get a domestic disturbance note on their record.  Like, FOR GOOD REASON.  Holy shit, we hear about how extraordinary the SEALs are every other second, and they can't figure out how to not get into a frigging fistfight on the street with their daughter's boyfriend?  And if I remember correctly, this fight happened because Jack didn't tell Laurie's dad they were dating.  Great reason to just whale on each other! Too bad Laurie had to ruin the fun by getting a concussion because your dumb asses don't know how to act like adults.  Totally called-for response.  So finding out two people you like are seeing each other: fist fight resulting in ambulances and police.  Finding out your daughter's knocked up and the guy who did literally hasn't returned a phone call in six weeks: buy him a drink!  Makes perfect sense.

Look, if you get accidentally pregnant, and you can't even get this guy to return a phone call for six weeks (because he'd been "ordered" not to have any contact with her.  Christ, it's a good thing he literally has a brain injury as an excuse because that's a super shitty thing to do) then I think it's a pretty big clue that you should not be planning a long term future with them.  I mean, do they ever explore how Laurie's experience growing up with SEALs and her resulting desire not become involved with one is solved, or are we to assume that Jack's dick has the power not only to heal his own memory but also to remove hers?

I will gloss over the whole "let's recreate the scene of my most traumatic memory on an island, just the two of us, plus some unloaded guns and explosives" because I was already mentally checked out by then, but that was in there too.

I picked this since I was really coming up blank on this prompt.  I just don't really watch that many shows or movies that have people reading real books in them (plenty of fake books though) and this one happened to pop up in Happy Death Day with a clearly visible title, and I was like, SOLD.  By the way, that movie is a hoot.  I highly recommend it, unlike this book.

14 - A Book You See Someone Reading On TV Or In A Movie

Ten Second Reviews

A Study in Scarlet Women

By Sherry Thomas

The tale of Sherlock Holmes, if Sherlock were actually a woman.  I don't know what list I was that I found this book on, but I really enjoyed it.  The author started as a historical romance writer, and her knowledge of the time period really shows.  The main character (although we do get viewpoints from various characters, I'll consider Charlotte the main one) has a lovely relationship with her sister(s) (one of them is disabled, so she doesn't appear much, but figures in Charlotte's plans along with Livia), and with the other supporting characters - Mrs. Watson, Lord whatshisname, the police sergeant.  Sometimes you just want to read about people who are nice to each other and respect each other, and this had that in spades.  The mystery was good, I suppose, although there was a lot of interrelatedness that I didn't quite follow - you'd think London was a village of two hundred the way everyone is involved with everyone else, and it wraps up almost abruptly when the crucial clue is given, but I've already ordered the next in the series.

A Conspiracy in Belgravia

By Sherry Thomas

The second in the "Lady Sherlock" series, I still enjoyed the writing and characters, but the plot made even less sense - so Sherlock's half-brother, Myron Finch, was an accountant who disappeared, but it turns out he worked for Moriarty and stole information and escaped, but wound up getting a job as the Holmes' carriage-man? Um, what, no one recognized him?  And Lady Ingram just pretended the whole love affair? And how long was this other guy pretending to be Myron? The critiques of the first one were magnified in this one, and the good qualities did not keep pace  - I came out of this feeling somewhat dissatisfied and unsure whether I'm going to continue.  Characters are good, relationships are good, writing is good, but plot is like, that gif of the blinking man.

Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451

By Ray Bradbury

Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden.

Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television.

When Mildred attempts suicide and Clarisse suddenly disappears, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. He starts hiding books in his home, and when his pilfering is discovered, the fireman has to run for his life.

This is a tough one to review, because this book has been exhaustively picked over - the edition I read came with like, ten mini-essays in the back, PLUS a foreword PLUS like, Ray Bradbury's notes on everything.  Let me start by saying that I was already very familiar with the story (who isn't, at this point) but not like, the "plot".  I put that in quotation marks because the plot is definitely not the main attraction for Bradbury.  Neil Gaiman wrote the intro on my copy, and he basically said, readers today have to recreate a past that created a future, which was good warning, because they are super casual about atom bombs in Fahrenheit 451 and that is because they didn't really know that they were making radioactive hellscapes and so being like, hey, let's walk back to the city makes a lot more sense.

I was... not super impressed? It's that weird hurky jerky style where people can only speak in deeply meaningful abrupt phrases, which resembles actual human conversation not at all, and Bradbury can be super flowery it at points, especially in the beginning.  This is page 3:

"The autumn leaves blew over the pavement in such a way as to make the girl who was moving there seem fixed to a sliding walk, letting the motion of the wind and leaves carry her forward.  Her head was half bent to watch her shoes stir the circling leaves.  Her face was slender and milk-white, and in it was a kind of gentle hunger that touched over everything with tireless curiosity. It was a look, almost, of pale surprise; the dark eyes so fixed to the world that no move escaped them. Her dress was white and it whispered. He almost thought he heard the motion of her hands as she walked, and the infinitely small sound now, the white stir of her face turning when she discovered she was a moment away from a man who stood in the middle of the pavement waiting."

He also has a white fixation that was distracting, honestly: Clarisse was white, his wife was white, the books were white, stones were white, if there's any color described ever, it's white. Snow white, milk white, moon white, pale white, on and on and on.

It's interesting that part of the underlying premise of Fahrenheit is that the onset of special interest groups leads to the destruction of books, because each group finds something objectionable and censors it until eventually there is nothing left.  Interesting, because I feel like that has become such a popular position to take nowadays, that "political correctness is ruining free speech" and yet no one has brought Bradbury in on their side.  Probably because the people arguing it are not really here for fine literature.  And ironic because the people arguing it are those most likely to advocate for a prison society. 

I thought of a great way to end this review, but it was late at night and I was going to bed and didn't write it down.  You'll just have to imagine it.  Also, and not to sidetrack the issue, I just realized I've been imagining the world of Fahrenheit 451 as completely pastel colored, and I have no idea why.  Maybe because the whole thing strikes me as suburbia gone wild, and I have this weird association of suburbia and pastel colors since Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  Gosh, I wish I knew how brains worked. Aaand we've come full circle for discussion of nuclear bombs!  Excellent! (let's ignore the fact that I just re-watched that scene and it is not pastel at all.  What the hell am I thinking of, then? Gosh darn it, it should be pastel! And I just looked up Stromae's music video for Papaoutai, which I ALSO thought was pastel, and it...only sort of is, and I'm out of ideas, so who knows where I came up with that, but it sure makes Fahrenheit 451 less spooky.  I'd love living in a pastel neighborhood.  It would almost make up for living in a dystopic version of the future.)

*No, I am not thinking of Edward Scissorhands, I've only seen parts of that movie, and that had to have been at least twenty years ago. Or am I? Isn't that a horrible thought, that something I saw only a glimpse of a lifetime ago would continue to distort every recollection I have?  Now, let's write a book based on that nightmare.

05 - A Book With At Least One Million Ratings On Goodreads

Ten Second Reviews

The Lost Man

By Jane Harper

A man is found dead, curled up in the only shade for miles in the outback.  His car is found, working, and filled with water and food, abandoned, miles away.  His brother Nathan, who at three hours away is also his nearest neighbor, tries to navigate both long-buried family secrets and the current day mystery as to why his brother would essentially commit suicide by leaving shelter in the harsh Australian conditions.

Having been recommended this after reading The Dry, I have to say, I enjoyed this one even more! It bears a similar resemblance to The Dry, what with the reliving of past traumas, an outcast from the town coming back to the fold, and the current mystery about a man who does something completely out of character.  However, The Lost Man gives a much better sense of scene - this is trite, but the environment is another character in the book.  Lives literally hang in the balance depending on how well prepared you are when you leave your front door.  The screaming isolation, omnipresent red dust, and killing heat add to the atmosphere and plays a crucial role in the plot.  This is a book to read in the winter to feel warm again.  Harper does a good job portraying a man who has been loosened from all societal ties and finds himself drifting closer to the edge, even as he sees it coming.  And the resolution of the brother's death was well done - there's no "shocking twist" coming - the lead-up to the conclusion was earned and such that even while you might have a pretty good idea of what happened, it was still a revelation as to who.  Finishing The Lost Man felt like drawing out poison from an old would, a sense of calm after the increasing paranoia and trauma relived throughout the book.  I like how Harper does endings - as short as they are after the denouement, you know the characters well enough from the story to know where everyone is going from here and it feels satisfying, although in this case, I would have actually loved to spend even more time with everyone (not like The Dry, which has some less sympathetic people).

Echo North

By Joanna Ruth Meyer

So this is another re-telling of East of the Sun, West of the Moon, although that was not immediately clear to me.  There's bits and pieces of other stories in there too - Beauty and the Beast, Tam Lin,  anything involving an evil step-mother... I don't think I would have picked it up if I'd realized - EotS, WofM is not my favorite fairy tale (it's weirdly long and convoluted), and I think Edith Pattou's East is the definitive re-telling - no need to keep trying at it, it's pretty much perfect on its own.   That being said, I don't really have a ton of other critiques for Echo North.  It's fine, it doesn't always make logical sense, the way that the original story never really made sense, and Hal never really developed into that interesting of a character, so Echo's journey to save him felt more mandated by plot than true love.

Misfortune

Misfortune

By Wesley Stace

On a moonlit night on the outskirts of London, Misfortune unfolds the tale of Rose, an infant boy adopted and raised as a girl, who must abandon the luxury and safety of his beloved home and travel halfway around the world to discover who he really is - and to unlock the secret of his rightful place.

I chose this for the "written by a musician" prompt, because I absolutely was not in the mood for any rock biographies and this one sounded entertaining, with a Dickens-influenced tale of mistaken identity.  Well.  Fools rush in, as they say.  It's not my style, but worse than that, I am two hundred pages in and there's been virtually no action, just scene-setting.  For a five hundred page book, that's practically criminal.  We spent probably fifty pages re-hashing the same event from three different perspectives, and frankly, none of it added anything to the story.  We could have easily done it in ten pages, and zipped along.  I found myself just getting bored.  For a story about a extremely wealthy cross-dressing boy stolen in infancy and his greedy relatives, it is just the dullest thing.  It needs more humor!  We had a brief flash of it when a visiting cousin was muzzled and walked like a dog, but that really feels like the only levity this whole time.  There's a weirdly brief and yet still-too-long scene wherein an older cousin molests Rose and climaxes/dies when he discovers Rose has a penis, and it's kind of played for laughs?  But mostly it was just awful and unpleasant.  

There is a lot of filler here.  I get that the author is going for the Dickensian feel, but Dickens was actually getting paid by the word, and he did it serial style, so things actually happened in each chapter.  We're getting thirty page chapters wherein the most exciting event is that they find an old book in a tree.  

And then we take a brief and bizarre turn into Turkey, and after having spent approximately a zillion words on the events of two days, we have absolutely no description of how Rose made it from England to Turkey, and then how she makes it back.  She's simply there and then she's back in England.  It's a necessary interval, since Stace spent basically the first half of the book stuffing her full of angst, and needed something to kick her out of it for the second half.  My solution would have been not to stuff her full of angst to begin with, and also, to make the first half a first tenth, but this is why I don't make the big bucks.  Or small bucks; I don't think there's much money in authorship.

The good news is the back half does zip by in comparison, although there's still enough time for two more gross sex/unconscious undressing scenes.  Since none of them are with family members though, I'm calling it a win.  

Stace does this multiple times, spending pages and pages on things we (sorry, I) do not care about at all, only to gloss over sections in which clearly some very interesting things happen!  Like when Rose gets married(?) and has a baby with Sarah before she turns 19?  I mean, what the hell happened there?  We're at the reckoning and then all of sudden Rose is holding up this baby ala The Lion King and presenting him as the next Lord Loveall.

And this whole things is solved in some sort of weird balladeer-panto way?  I'm sorry, but if we're referencing classic Dickensian fashion, there should be some long-lost documentation, which was almost destroyed multiple times, but not quite, which absolutely proves Rose's claim to the property.  None of this "eyewitness" bullshit.  None of this "Osmond felt bad for murdering three people twenty years ago, including a pregnant woman and confessed the whole thing".  

Now that I've finished the whole book, I can safely say that I just do not see the point of the Turkey detour.  We spend pages and pages on Rose's ramblings which (a) seem to be a mishmash of made up songs and personal experiences and (b) are never really explained. We're introduced to Franny, who never appears again; the whole thing is like a fever dream.  Clearly things happened to Rose on the journey out, as she alludes in vague terms to sexual favors, but we're left dangling over a pretty freaking important development in Rose's life, and one that sounds frankly traumatizing.  But it all washes away after her suicide attempt! Here's one where the journey isn't as important as the destination.

In the spirit of Dickens: Bah Humbug.

03: A Book Written By A Musician (Fiction or Nonfiction)

Hot Dog Girl

Hot Dog Girl

By Jennifer Dugan

Elouise (Lou) Parker is determined to have the absolute best, most impossibly epic summer of her life. There are just a few things standing in her way:

  *  She's landed a job at Magic Castle Playland . . . as a giant dancing hot dog.

  *  Her crush, the dreamy Diving Pirate Nick, already has a girlfriend, who is literally the Princess of the park. But Lou's never liked anyone, guy or otherwise, this much before, and now she wants a chance at her own happily ever after.

  *  Her best friend, Seeley, the carousel operator, who's always been up for anything, suddenly isn't when it comes to Lou's quest to set her up with the perfect girl or Lou's scheme to get close to Nick.

  *  And it turns out that this will be their last summer at Magic Castle Playland--ever--unless she can find a way to stop it from closing.

I'm doing this one out of order, because the prompt is seasonal, and I figured why not squeeze the review in seasonally too?

So although I didn't love Hot Dog Girl, I am allowing myself to be charmed by it, and I will not be too harsh.  I mean, it's just a light summer read about a girl learning about falling in love, treating your friends right, not being down on yourself all the time, and becoming a little more grown up and mature.  Not like, real mature though, the book ends in a bake sale after all, but it's a cute enough story, done with a light hand.

I gravitated towards it because I love hot dogs and wanted a book for summer that was really about summer - summer as you always remember it fondly years later with endless days and warm nights when you're able to roam the town. Mosquito bites and shorts and beaches and the smell of sun screen and bug spray and the feeling of freedom.  Adult books about summer are mostly about indiscretions on Cape Cod during a rich people get-together or "finding yourself" in a new place after your husband divorces you.  Not quite the same thing.  Summer is my favorite season, but summer as a child, not summer as an adult, where you still have work in over air-conditioned offices, and only get brief tastes of the freedom you used to feel. Although you do occasionally get to participate in hot-dog eating contests, so it's not all disappointment as an adult.

Anyway, Hot Dog Girl does have that same nostalgic sense of summer freedom and loss, in this case because the fun park she's working at is going to close, which is nicely obvious metaphor for the closing of that period in your life where you can still go home again. Everything moves on!  You grow up and visit the old haunts and realize the water slide has become a parking lot for a pharmaceutical company and you just have to deal with it.  Or like in Grosse Pointe Blank, when your home has become an Ultimart. "You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there."

Lou is a fictional character and also only like, seventeen, so the fact that she doesn't realize that her bonkers plan to fake date her best friend to get closer to this guy she has a crush on is going to end in her realizing she's actually in love with her best friend is more forgiveable.  I suppose she doesn't have access to tv tropes like the rest of us.  Or like, to Can't Buy Me Love and To All The Boys I've Loved Before.  I was so-so on this part.  It was pretty telegraphed what was going to happen, but Nick (her crush) turns out to be nice and into her, and I felt kind of bad at the end when he winds up telling her that he moved to town to get away from bullies and then he ends up alone, after both his girlfriend and his crush find new partners.  Seeley, Lou's best friend, has a more limited arc, since her role is mainly to be the ever-patient friend who's been in love with Lou forever and puts up with her shenanigans. 

But like I said, it's all done with a light enough hand, and Lou never becomes so annoying with her antics that you end up rooting against her.  They all re-partner, they don't save the park, but they raise money for the owner's sick granddaughter, and much lessons are learned about meddling, self-confidence, and friendship.  The parts about Lou's mother leaving are well done, and the mental image of her in a hot dog costume is never not funny. More hot dogs, is what I say!

44: Read A Book During The Season It Is Set In

Fangirl

Fangirl

By Rainbow Rowell

Cath is a Simon Snow fan. Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan, but for Cath, being a fan is her life-and she's really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it's what got them through their mother leaving.

Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.

Cath's sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can't let go. She doesn't want to.
Now that they're going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn't want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She's got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words . . . And she can't stop worrying about her dad, who's loving and fragile and has never really been alone.

For Cath, the question is: Can she do this? Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?

This was one of those that I wanted to like more - in fact, I did like well enough, until the second half of the book and I just kept feeling disappointed by the characters. It just felt like things kind of... petered out at the end.

We're introduced to "Cath" Cather, and her co-dependence on her twin sister, Wren from page one, as Cath moves into her college dorm.  I suppose the book could be about separating from your twin, growing up and staying friends, and managing your relationships, but it kind of just feels like Cath replaced Wren with co-dependent relationships with roommate Regan and especially with boyfriend, Levi.

[Sidebar: I really disliked Levi.  He was intrusive, demanding, and the age difference (and especially the maturity difference) between him and Cath gave the whole thing a much creepier vibe than I think the author intended.  It reminded me of Twilight: why would this older guy who appears to have his shit (mostly) together, be interested in this weird, asocial, mouse?  I just never got the sense that they were romantically compatible.  And also, it is fucking weird to start dating your older roommate's older ex-boyfriend while you literally live in the same room. It felt more like a relationship of opportunity than anything else.  "This guy is friendly to me and won't leave me alone, I guess I may as well date him."]

I spent some time in my last review hating on Cath, and I suppose I may as well continue here too.  I swear it was a total accident that I am reading two books with such related underlying themes (draggy girl who uses her fun twin sister as a crutch and has mommy issues tries to cope with her sister's emotional separation) although it's fun to spot the similarities and differences (different sisters wind up needing hospitalization! grandmothers have to fill in for absent mothers! fathers are helpless and hapless! you kinda root for the other sister!).

This may be my personal bias, but the Simon Snow excerpts sounded more interesting than the Fangirl story, and I'm clearly not the only one, since Rowell's gone on to write separate books just on the fanfiction.  It's obviously a Harry Potter take-off, but Harry Potter is one of the most successful stories ever, for good reason.  It's captivating!

Meanwhile, in Fangirl, it feels a little bit like Wren is meant to be the bad sister, just because she wants to get away from the human leech that is Cath.  I don't know if Rowell's intent was to suggest that both sisters are coping horribly with their mother's departure in different but equally terrible ways (Wren by drinking and partying, Cath by never leaving her room), but after a few weeks distance from the book, what it feels like is that Wren got punished for wanting to be more social, with a trip to the hospital for alcohol poisoning, and Cath was, well, kinda vindicated that she'd been right about Wren and her father all along. Which seems unfair, since Cath was just as messed up as any of them, and yet she's the only one who doesn't wind up in a hospital.  It just feels to me like Cath needed to do a lot of growing up herself, and I just didn't really see that she did. 

17: A Book Set On A College Or University Campus