Wild

Wild (2012) by Cheryl Strayed. At the age of 26, having suffered a series of life losses, Strayed decided to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from Mohave in southern California to Oregon. In case there's any doubt, this is a long hike. It's also a pretty lonely hike, although she did meet and befriend several other people along the trail. In this book, Strayed does a beautiful job of storytelling, shifting back and forth from her "normal" life off the trail to her intense suffering on the trail. (In the course of the hike, she lost 6 of her 10 toenails.) She is now living what sounds like a pretty happy life, married with children and living in Portland, Oregon. This book is a very involving and satisfying read. I recommend it highly. Grade: A-

Ascent of the A-Word

Ascent of the A-Word: Assholism, the First Sixty Years (2012) by Geoffrey Nunberg. The word asshole first appeared among GIs in the 1940s during World War II.  ...

Arcadia

Arcadia (2012) by Lauren Groff. Arcadia is a commune, apparently started in the '60s or '70s, where the leading family of this book resides for the first half of the book. Bit -- that's his nickname -- is the protagonist, and he is born and raised in the commune, so that he knows no other way of life. The book follows him as he grows up and becomes middle-aged, and as the commune eventually topples under its own weight. He falls in love with Helle, a girl from Arcadia, and she is in and out of his life from then on. Bit successfully makes the transition from the commune to "normal" life, becoming a successful photographer and teacher after he is forced to move to the city. This book is a good read, but I'm not sure it is an essential book -- that it needed to be written. I suppose there are many novels written each year that we don't need, so perhaps that's not a valid criticism. If you're looking for an entertaining book that will transport you to a different place and time, you could do a lot worse than Arcadia. Grade: B+

Penelope

Penelope (2012) by Rebecca Harrington. Penelope is a freshman at Harvard in an unspecified year in the 2000s. She relates to people she meets at school by saying "Sure," or "Cool" or "OK" to things she really doesn't want to do. She is the very definition of the person who says yes when she wants to say no. The book shows her struggles throughout her freshman year, as she tries to make friends while lacking the knowledge of what it takes to make people like her. Penelope has a flat affect, and the book has a flat affect also. Maybe you had to be a previous Harvard freshman to get the jokes, but I just didn't find the book very funny -- even though I think it is intended to be. Penelope's cell phone conversations with her mother are fairly amusing, as it becomes clear where her cluelessness comes from. But in general, the book didn't move me. Grade: B

The Sugar Frosted Nutsack

The Sugar Frosted Nutsack (2012) by Mark Leyner. The Sugar Frosted Nutsack is an outrageous novel with an outrageous title. It's not for everyone. It begins with the arrival of the Gods, The drunken Gods arrive by bus at a place they do not recognize. ("It's almost as if they'd been on some sort of 'Spring Break,' as if they'd 'gone wild.' ") The Gods have strange names, and go by so many aliases that it would be hard to keep track of them if Leyner did not consistently repeat their aliases and catalog them all over and over. Leyner's imagination is so boundless, his vocabulary to immense, his knowledge of pop culture so encyclopedic, that he imbues this novel with a weird sense of wonder that seems totally original. Needless to say, the book is also very funny, if you "get" it. Like I said, it's not for everyone. But for those who can stick with it and who see the humor in Leyner's weird stylings, I give it a Grade: A

The Darlings

The Darlings (2012) by Cristina Alger. A view from the top as the Darlings, a wealthy New York clan, are affected by the 2008 crash. The crisis, for them, is precipitated by the apparent suicide of Morty Reis, a financier who has been running a Ponzi scheme and is about to be found out. His disappearance shocks the Darlings and their friends and business associates, and precipitates a series of actions which lead to the downfall of the Darlings' dynasty. I had a hard time figuring out why I should care about the Darlings. They weren't particularly likable, and they had certainly had it good for a long time. Perhaps this book was meant to arouse schadenfreude in the reader. The author certainly seems to show an intimate knowledge of her subject matter -- the Wall Street environment, high finance, etc. But it just wasn't very interesting to me. Grade: B-

Gods Without Men

Gods Without Men (2011) by Hari Kunzru. Near a strange three-columned rock formation in the desert Southwest of the U.S., strange events take place. Kunzru interweaves the story of Jaz and Lisa, a married couple with an autistic son, with stories from throughout history about events at the three-fingered rock formation. Eventually, the stories converge, and the weird events happen to Jaz and Lisa when their young son disappears in the desert. I was somewhat disappointed in this book, as all the disparate threads of the narrative didn't seem to come together in the end to make a coherent whole. What we are left with is speculation and what-ifs that don't wholly satisfy. I may have missed something, but I was left with the feeling that Kunzru left something out. Grade: B

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (2012) by Jeanette Winterson. When Winterson was a baby, she was adopted by a Pentecostal couple, the female half of whom would later proclaim that they had been "led to the wrong crib" by the Devil. Winterson's adoptive mother was cold and unloving towards her -- among other things, she would lock young Jeanette out of the house overnight for infractions real or imagined. Jeanette Winterson left home at the age of 16 because she was in love with a woman, and never went back. Somehow she got an education at Oxford and managed to write several published books. This book is her own story, and after I got used to her writing style I found it quite readable and entertaining and even moving. The quote that makes up the title of the book -- "Why be happy when you could be normal?" -- is Winterson's adoptive mother's response to the revelation that Winterson loved women. Jeanette's search for her birth mother is both frustrating (bureaucracy) and ultimately touching (she was wanted). I found this book very rewarding. Grade: B+