Clever Magazine, In Bed with the Phantom (www.clevermag.com)

Wanna read the latest from Clever Magazine?
Click here and return to the coverpage!

In Bed with the Phantom:
more book news

by Diannek

Turn out that light!

Winter 2012: Happy New Year! That's what I'm looking for, a way better year than 2011. Sometimes real life comes crashing down on you, and a person has to put the books down for a while. That's what happened to me last June. Lots of personal stuff to deal with, but now things are settling down and I've finally found time to do a little reading, just dipping back into it again, nothing really heavy duty. Small steps.

I'm thinking that this is another way of saying I haven't read anything really memorable lately.

I'll start off with some recent book clubber reading:
Half Broke Horses, by Jeannette Walls was an interesting story, not terribly well written though. It takes a while to get used to the way Walls puts her sentences together, she has what we might call a very distinctive voice. This memoir is about her grandmother, a woman of great indurance and grit. The story starts off in Chicago, when she was young and on her own during the first part of the twentieth century, a time when things were difficult for single ladies. After meeting, marrying and leaving a scoundral, she returns to her family somewhere in the Southwest, where things are even worse. She does unimaginable things to survive. Probably the most interesting was when she works as a school teacher in a one-room school house in the desolate southwestern US. It's hard to admire some of the things she did, but you have to hand it to her, she's a survivor. It's a ompelling story, a page-turner, because you have no idea what's coming next. Everybody seems to love this book.

The Paris Wife, by Paula McLain. It's another memoir, this one by Hemmingway's first wife. I was never much of a Hemmingway fan, but now that I know a little something about his personal life, I like him even less. I don't know how many wives he had, but I think there were a number of them. Look it up on Wickpedia, I'm not that interested.

The Paris wife, Hadley was her name, was head-over-heels in love with the guy and in way over her head. She was a small town girl used to the simple life. She had no idea what she was in for when they moved to Paris. If it weren't for her small trust fund inheritance, they would have starved, but that had no effect on Hem. He did whatever he wanted to do, took advantage of poor forlorn Hadley, mistreated her terribly and then left her for another woman after he began to be a somewhat successful writer. And that pattern was probably repeated with the rest of his wives.

It was so similar to the memoir we read about that other womanizer, Frank Lloyd Wright. Same pattern, same deceit, same excuses.

I think I'll go back to my earlier position on reading memoirs and biography, which was "DON'T". It's a too-much-information situation. These guys were skum, and their women were pushovers. It's a little easier to like their work when you don't know them. Their lives seem to be about their ego-centric personalities and the cueless women trailing around after them. I'm really not interested!

On the other hand, I did enjoy Commited: a love story, by Elizabeth Gilbert. My book club does not like this sort of story -- a strong woman who knows what she wants, and who can write funny to boot. They prefer the tragic woman in the hopeless situation sort of memoir I'm afraid.

Commited picks up where Eat, Pray, Love ended, with Elizabeth in Bali with her lover. Neither Elizabeth or her lover want to marry again, they just want to live together. But they can't because he gets kicked out of the USA, some sort of TSA deal, they think he's a terrorist. He's not, but that's okay because otherwise there would be no story. Elizabeth finds out that the only way they can be together is if they get married. Then they can live in the USA. Of course, they could have lived elsewhere together for the rest of their lives, but then there would be no second book either. I digress.

While they are waiting for the US officials to grant them official permission to marry and live in the USA, they wander around the world and Elizabeth investigates all forms of marriages, like a benighted anthropologist writing a treatise. She's trying to convince herself and her lover that marriage would be a good thing for them. The story is wonderful, and the reader learns something about the institution of marriage in various forms, and eventually everything works out, or maybe not, but then that's life. (See the note above.)

After three consecutive memoirs, I had had enough. So I read part of a number of murder mysteries, actually finished several of them. None are interesting enough to write about. One called The Drop, by Michael Connelly, is still on the best seller list. Good for Michael. It's not a particularly interesting mystery but Michael is doing well and he's on the writing gravy train now, churning them out, while raking in the big bucks. Wait for this one, buy it at the Goodwill or on the remainder table. Ignore the NYT list.

One memorable book I read is called A Week in December, by Sebastian Faulks. He's British and has written a number of novels, some quite good (Birdsong, for example, about WWI). I do have to admit that he is one of my favorite writers, but I'm not recommending him highly. It takes some grit to stay with him.

This one is a "modern" novel", set in London, seven days, seven stories, and it's about seven of the longest days ever, because the book rambles along, seeming never to get to the point. But, eventually, the seven characters sort of cross paths (in a Kevin Bacon sort of way), with a thriller ending (remember, it's British, so it's a British thriller ending). Many readers won't get that far, I'm afraid. It's one of those books that is worth it to read through to the end. I learned a few things along the way, which is always a good thing to say about a novel. Why else would we read anything, right?

I am going to begin some serious reading very soon, when I figure out what "serious" means to me at this point in my life. So stay tuned, maybe we'll find the perfect reading material very soon,

Yours truly, The Phantom

Oh, you wanna find out what the Phantom was reading last year? Really? Click here then.

As you know, Clever is not a commercial site, but we do get some revenue from amazon whenever you click thru from our site to theirs and purchase anything they carry! It helps with expenses. So if the spirit moves you, click their logo, buy a book or whatever you want and you'll help us out. Thanks!