Book Log 2023 #5: Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

It's odd that I'd never read this book before, given that I've read a lot of Bradbury's writing and that it's part of a trilogy that starts with Dandelion Wine, which might be my favorite book. It doesn't have any of the same characters as the first book, but is set in the same town (Green Town, a stand-in for Bradbury's hometown) and traffics in some of the same mystery and wonder of being a kid and growing up.

It's now late October in Green Town, and there's a sense among the people that something is coming. What that turns out to be is a carnival, to the delight of most. But there are a few who have a sense of foreboding, which turns out to be justified.  There is a supernatural power to the carnival and its leader, Mr. Dark, which threatens the town, and it's up to a pair of 13 year old boys and one of their fathers to save the day.

While there are thematic similarities between this book and Dandelion Wine, this book is darker, and leans more heavily into fantasy and horror. It's also much more cohesive as a story, as it was written as a novel (via a short story turned film treatment) rather than a series of linked stories. I still think Dandelion Wine is my favorite Bradbury work, but this may be second (I'll have to reread Fahrenheit 451 to be sure).

 Book Log 2023 #4: The Chosen by Chaim Potok

It's another book assigned in junior high, but this time one I actually finished and liked (helped, I would think, by being about two high school boys).

Danny Saunders and Reuven Malter meet during a baseball game which is as much a contest between two strains of Judaism - Reuven and his team are from an Orthodox school, while Danny and his team represent a nearby Hasidic school - as it is a game. The two schools are geographically close, but the kids don't really know each other that well.

When Reuven is injured by a ball hit by Danny, it leads (eventually) to a friendship. They confide in each other about family (Danny's father only talks to him when studying Talmud) and the future, where Danny wants to become a psychologist rather than follow his father as leader of their community. The relationships between the fathers and the sons is a major theme of the book, as is the role of tradition and faith in the modern world.

I, of course, missed a lot of this when I first read the book, having no real experience with Judaism or the expectations of living up to a specific tradition. I'm glad I revisited it.

 Book Log 2023 #4: The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan

Frida is a new mom, who, like most new moms, finds tending to her child exhausting. When she leaves the child unattended for a couple of hours to see to herself, she is caught and sentenced to the titular school, where instructors (none of whom actually appear to be mothers themselves) will re-educate Frida so she doesn't make the same mistake twice.

This is the very basic outline Chan's debut novel, which in its satire of mommy culture and government/family dynamics also ventures into issues of gender (notably in interactions with the school for fathers) and race (not surprisingly, non-white mothers have a much harder time at the school and with the system in general). There is a distinct Handmaid's Tale vibe, though it's hard to say if the draconian nature of the school extends into other facets of the government.

I'm guessing I would have gotten more out of the book if I were a mother, or even a woman considering having children (which is where Chan was when she started writing). I don't think you have to be a mother to feel for the characters or understand the tensions in the story, but I have to think that being able to see yourself in Frida or one of the other mothers would open up another level of connection.

 Book Log 2023 #3: Shroud for a Nightingale by P.D. James

This is the fourth book in the Adam Dalgliesh series, where he investigates murder at a local nursing college. I think it's better than the books preceding it, but I'm still struggling to connect with the series. I think the main problem is that I still don't have much of a clue as to who Dalgliesh is. By comparison, four books into the Inspector Morse series I had a much better idea of who he was as a person and his approach to solving cases (even if we didn't know his first name).

I am likely to stick with the series, just not in any particular hurry to do so. 

 Book Log 2023 #2: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

For years, seventh grade world history classes at my junior high school read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Except for my class in my seventh grade year, when the teacher pulled an audible and assigned this book instead.  In retrospect the change makes some sense, as it's a shorter book and I don't think the class really spent much time on Africa. And it was in the middle of the Cold War, so some added insight into the Evil Empire couldn't hurt.

Except that the class, almost to a person, decided not to read the book. I myself barely got more than ten pages in when I decided to bail. I didn't find the book too difficult, it just didn't click for me (much like A Passage to India, which I was also supposed to read at some point and bailed on early).  You can imagine the talking to we got after taking the test on the book.

Anyway, I decided to give this another try for a reading challenge (read a book you bailed on in school), and found it much better going this time around (which I did not experience when I took my second pass at A Passage to India). I think younger me would have actually liked the book had he stuck with it. Its depiction of gulag life in the Stalin-era Soviet Union shows both the brutality and the mundanity of the system, and how one man finds ways to manipulate both so he can survive to the next day.

If you have any interest in the Soviet era, you should read this.

 Book Log 2023 #1: Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry

A pair of aging Irish drug runners stake out a Spanish ferry terminal to find one of their daughters, who took off after the death of her mother and is now traveling with kindred spirits around Spain and north Africa. While they wait the pair reminisce about their criminal past and what may lie ahead as aging gangsters.

For all the talk of crime in this book, it's not a crime novel. It's more about the ways past choices come home to roost, and the ways in which friendship can endure and, in some cases, be the only thing one can count on. And as you might expect in a book about Irish hoods, there's a fair bit of dark humor over both the past and their current situation.

This book picked up a number of accolades, and rightfully so. It avoids the tropes and easy markers of crime fiction and gives a much more nuanced and soulful examination of lives not that well-lived. Barry has a knack for writing characters on the margin (notably in his debut novel, City of Bohane), and here uses it to maximum effect.