The Waiting Game

In my life, I have waited for a lot of books. Starting with Harry Potter -- but certainly not ending with it! -- I have learned release dates, written them down on calendars, committed them to memory, lamented the fact that they were so far away, been frustrated by setbacks, and ultimately showed up at the bookstore as early as physically possible to grab a new copy of the next book by every author I loved.

To give you an idea of how much space this can take up in a person's brain, I am currently waiting on:

The next book in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series

The first book in Julie E. Czerneda's Clan Chronicles saga

Games Wizards Play, the next in Diane Duane's Young Wizards series

The final book in Holly Black's Curse Workers trilogy

Goliath, the final book in Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan Series

...and those are just the first ones that come to mind! I'm eagerly awaiting all of these books, out of a sustained love of author, story, world, and characters. Some of them, like Black and Westerfeld, I've only known since this summer. Others, like Duane, have been writing books worth waiting for since before I was born. However long the relationship, I know it's one that matters.

But sometimes, after waiting for the next book, and the next book, and the next, there comes a point when it is no longer worth it -- when the books aren't getting better, your memory of the early ones is fading, and the thought of re-reading them all just to catch up is just too daunting. Sometimes it's because the series has gone on too long. Sometimes it's because you've taken too long to read it, and what might have seemed acceptable in a three-week span of time loses its charm if spread across three months, or three years.

I'm always sad when I "lose" a series like this. I hate the feeling of having invested something in it and not getting the payback that I want, the satisfaction of loose ends tied up, plot threads neatly connected, character arcs completed. I don't want to be the person who gets so tired of waiting at the bus stop that I walk away two minutes before the bus arrives.

But with some series, I've made the tough but necessary decision that the bus is never coming -- or if it is, it's not going to take me anywhere that's worth the wait. The three that most immediately come to mind are Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series, Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series, and most recently (and perhaps most disappointingly) Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl series. All of them began by being interesting, and all of them let me down, but to keep reading them now out of loyalty to what they were -- or what they could have become -- would simply be to waste my time. After all, there are so many other books that are worth waiting for.

So, dear readers: what are the books that you're waiting for now? And what are the series you'll never wait for again?

The numbers

Sometimes I wonder about the point of reading. Usually this happens after a string of middling to bad books leave me reluctant to pick up the next, as I'm sure it's going to disappoint. At this point I am occasionally driven to the point of despair where I throw up my hands and a little niggling worm of doubt asks me why I read at all, if everything is drivel in the end?

This got me to thinking. Obviously you're looking for good books, right? You don't pick up a book if you think it's going to be bad. You just don't. But everyone picks up a bad book or two -- so even though we're all trying to find good books to read, trying to immerse ourselves in difference worlds and sensual language, not everything we read will be great. Not everything we read will even be good.

You don't expect everything to be amazing, but then again, you wouldn't read at all if almost everything was crap. So -- where's the balance? How many books do you actually classify as "good" or "great" or even "fantabulous"? How many books would you recommend to your friends?

As a point of illustration, I took a look at my Goodreads profile. Now, we can go on about the inaccuracies of ratings, and what does it mean for a book to get four stars or three giraffes or whatever, but I think we can all agree that generally speaking, higher ratings mean better books. So far in 2011, I have read 118 books. Here's the breakdown:

5 stars: 2 -- 1.7%
4 stars: 35 -- 29.7%
3 stars: 74 -- 62.7%
2 stars: 7 -- 5.9%

I haven't given any 1-star reviews -- probably because I'm getting better at putting bad books down instead of suffering through to the end. As you can see, 3-star reviews are my catch-all: books that I didn't find fascinating, that perhaps had some problems, but that I didn't regret reading once I'd finished. This category is close to 2/3 of my reading. Books that I would actually recommend, that I actively enjoyed? These would be 4- and 5-star reviews, generally speaking, and that (according to the extremely scientific data) is about 30% of my reading.

So. I would call 30% of the books I read "good" or "great." The rest, meh (or worse). What do you all think? Would you say that your reading spread looks similar? Or am I just really bad at picking the good stuff? If you were reading like I'm reading, would you throw up your hands and call it quits? Keep in mind that I'm on a 7-book 3-star streak right now...

Best Book to Read About Drugs, Sex, and Merino Wool

"The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation. He'd been dead for ten days before they found him, you know. It was one of the biggest manhunts in Vermont history—state troopers, the FBI, even an army helicopter; the college closed, the dye factory in Hampden shut down, people coming from New Hampshire, upstate New York, as far away as Boston.

It is difficult to believe that Henry's modest plan could have worked so well despite these unforeseen events. We hadn't intended to hide the body where it couldn't be found. In fact, we hadn't hidden it at all but had simply left it where it fell in hopes that some luckless passer-by would stumble over it before anyone even noticed he was missing. This was a tale that told itself simply and well: the loose rocks, the body at the bottom of the ravine with a clean break in the neck, and the muddy skidmarks of dug-in heels pointing the way down; a hiking accident, no more, no less, and it might have been left at that, at quiet tears and a small funeral, had it not been for the snow that fell that night; it covered him without a trace, and ten days later, when the thaw finally came, the state troopers and the FBI and the searchers from the town all saw that they had been walking back and forth over his body until the snow above it was packed down like ice."

Not that you can't already tell, but this book is really fucking good at being what it sets out to be. And I know you want to know what happens next.

The Secret History, by Donna Tartt, is a tale of death, claustrophobia, and sexual obsession. At the start of the school year, newly enrolled freshman Richard Papen falls in with an elite group of five students, all classics scholars, all globe-trotting sophisticates, and their charismatic, mezmorizing professor. The college is small and select. Discussion sections are conducted in wood-paneled inner sanctums. Everyone is unearthly attractive. In other words, reading this book is like stepping into a J. Crew ad where multiple gruesome murders have been committed and all the beautiful people know it and the make-up artists know it and the photographer knows it but no one is willing to say a thing. Meanwhile, all the models are primping in the mirror and trying to return their thoughts to the important things in life, namely, plaid or polyester? Except that raggedy piece of carpet right there. Yes, yes, that one. What is this odd dark spatter...?

From page one, you know how the victim will die, and by whose hands. The suspense that this knowledge generates cannot be overpraised.

There are naysayers out there that sneer at the book's popularity. And it's true that The Secret History doesn't really speak to me on a deep, deep level. But honestly, who needs life-changing philosophizing when you have J. CREW MODELS, engaged in sickening debauchery, committing random acts of philosophy, and all of it narrated in the sort of fattening, crème-smooth prose that mama always told you to lay off on before it busted the snaps of your pants?

Marissa Pessl's Topics in Calamity Physics plays a sad second fiddle to this book. And The Lake of Dead Languages isn't even in the same league.

Eduardo Galeano's Soccer in Sun and Shadow

Not that all the key people in my life didn't already know this, but I'm bonkers for soccer. Doesn't matter how you paint it. When the World Cup rolls around I am up at seven in the morning with my face paints and noisemakers and rubber doll stand-in, a face crudely drawn on it to resemble the opposition's star striker, which I will prick, viciously, with sewing pins, until results favorable to my peace of mind have been achieved. Shouting obscenities and rolling on the sofa in outrage when a call goes against my team are two of my favorite soccer-related pastimes. If national teams had heraldic sigils I'd have the relevant ones glue-gunned to my forehead. Unfortunately, these are only slight exaggerations.

That's all to say that I also do a fare amount of recreational reading about soccer! And this book, Soccer in Sun and Shadow, is one of the better ones that I've run across.

Galeano's very good when he's providing a voiceover for the drama of the game -- regaling his readers with tales about its idols and villains, jesters and figureheads, its big bustling personalities. He's great on obsessiveness of fandom, and nigh unbeatable on the variety of plot twists that can occur in the time between a ref's bookending whistles and cause traffic accidents and/or spontaneous designations of national holidays in countries on the other side of the world. He is very witty. I love that he acknowledges football's inherent absurdities, and the dottiness of people who make their whole lives run consequent to the sport, while also embracing it as the grand passion of his own life.

I think he's less effective when he's trying to wax polemic. His politics are interesting but difficult to convey in vignette form, so what you get is a blaring paragraph on class rage and the commercialization and commodification of soccer, but not much in the way of complexity, a careful exploration of issues surveyed from multiple perspectives. He's perhaps overfond of pithy sayings, and is very sure of his own opinions, a sure recipe for forceful aphorism, or folly. He makes snap judgments, with a shrug, and history, teeming, is ordered into a line. There's this tic he has of using big-money words that is gorgeous at first but then, slowly, wearying.

On a a number of subjects, he is poignant. I think that's really my favorite thing about this book. How absolutely spot-on he is, and about a variety of things.

The Fan

Once a week, the fan flees his house and goes to the stadium.

Banners wave and the air resounds with rattles, firecrackers and drums; it rains streamers and confetti. The city disappears, its routine forgotten, all that exists is the temple. In this sacred place, the only religion without atheists puts its divinities on display. Although the fan can contemplate the miracle more comfortably on TV, he prefers to make the pilgrimage to this spot where he can see his angels in the flesh doing battle with the demons of the day.

Here the fan shakes his scarf, gulps his saliva, swallows his bile, eats his cap, whispers prayers and curses and suddenly breaks out in an ovation, leaping like a flea to hug the stranger at his side, cheering the goal. While the pagan mass lasts, the fan is many. Along with thousands of other devotees he shares the certainty that we are the best, that all referees are crooked, that all the adversaries cheat.

... When the game is over, the fan, who has not moved from the stands, celebrates his victory: 'What a goal we scored', 'What a beating we gave them'. Or he cries over his defeat: 'They swindled us again', 'Thief of a referee'. And then the sun goes down and so does the fan. Shadows fall over the emptying stadium. On the concrete terracing a few fleeting bonfires burn, while the lights and voices fade. The stadium is left alone and the fan, too, returns to his solitude: to the I who had been we. The fan goes off, the crowd breaks up and melts away, and Sunday becomes as melancholy as Ash Wednesday after the death of carnival.

The melancholy I who had been we. That is so good.

Books that make me hungry

Maybe it's because I'm just a hungry person, but there are some things that are guaranteed to start my mouth watering. Menus posted outside restaurants. Bakeries (and cupcakeries!). And books. Books with food. Since I'm currently in a hungry mood, I thought you all should join me while I wait for my homemade pasta sauce to heat up. Without further ado, a few books with excellent treats in their pages:

1. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl. Can anything possibly top this book? I've read it so many times the cover is falling off, and still I find myself thinking of it whenever I think of chocolate. Or candy. Or sweets. Or food. There is some ghastly stuff in here, specifically the portrayal of Charlie's family sleeping four to a bed in a cracked up old shack on the outskirts of town, but I don't read it for that (although perhaps I should). I don't even read this book for the characters. I read it for the chocolate.

2. Silver Phoenix, by Cindy Pon. Again, there's a lot of stuff that goes on in this book. Gods, misfortune, a strong heroine and a dashing hero. But what held my attention about this book? Oh yes, the cuisine. Silver Phoenix is firmly grounded in a mythical version of Chinese history and culture...and the food. Pon's descriptions of the food are literally mouth-watering. (Unless you don't like Chinese food, in which case -- what's wrong with you?) One thing I loved about Ai Ling, the heroine, was that she wasn't afraid to eat, and when she did, she savored her food, allowing the audience to savor it with her. Steaming pork buns! Oh, I wish I had a pork bun (or three) right now...

3. Comfort Me With Apples, by Ruth Reichl. So I'm always just a little bit jealous of people who get paid to write. But I'm doubly jealous of Ruth Reichl, since not only does she get paid to write, she gets paid to eat and write about that. Again, there is a lot of the personal in this book (it is a memoir, after all) but what I remember at the end of the day are the meals. The food, the wine, and the writing that comes out of it. Man, I wish I could be a restaurant critic. Unfortunately my non-drinking habit and food allergies would make that tough. But at least I get to live vicariously through Ruth Reichl's career as a New York Times restaurant critic.

So, friends. What books are making you hungry today? After this, I am feeling the irresistible urge to get dim sum, eat a cupcake, and then splurge on a ridiculously overpriced dinner at Chez Panisse. But maybe that's just me.

Best Book to Read Slowly

I am a fast reader. In fact, until I met fellow Lost Girl Rebecca, I was the fastest reader I knew.* Of course, there's a difference between reading quickly for fun and reading quickly for "work," but either way, I'm the kind of person who enjoys the headrush of reading the last 250 pages of a book in one sitting. A perfect book is one that I can finish in several sustained bouts of reading spread across a quiet three-day weekend -- beginning with a few chapters here and there, reading more and more pages per sitting as the plot begins to thicken, and finally settling down behind a closed door emphatically distraction-free to allow the last quarter of the book to completely bowl me over.

So when professors and friends whose taste I trust all recommended that I read Middlemarch by George Eliot, I settled myself in for this kind of pulled-through-by-my-shirt-collar experience. I set aside an entire week of my winter break to read this novel, which in most printings clocks in at around 800 pages, figuring that if I had once managed Dickens's comparably lengthy Bleak House in four days, seven should allow me just enough time to savor Eliot before jumping back into research for my honors thesis on Jane Austen.

I do not think I have ever been so wrong.

Middlemarch is sumptuous, intricate, textured -- like an ancient tapestry hand-crafted by a master -- and every sentence of Eliot's masterful prose counts. To ignore or skim even a single phrase seems vaguely blasphemous, and not just because I immerse myself in unraveling textual tapestries for a living, searching out the smallest hints and clues at meaning.** Another adjective that applies to the work is very definitely "sprawling," but to someone used to the occasionally babbling sprawl of Dickens, who often feels like he's introducing new characters simply for the sake of a laugh or a cry, Eliot is a very different kind of writer. Just as she makes you feel like each individual word has been hand-chosen for its position alongside all the others in a given phrase, the larger arc of her story leaves no character unaccounted for, tying them deftly into the warp and weft of the larger plot.

Middlemarch is beautiful. It is also totally resistant to fast reading. When I started it over winter break, I managed to get through the first 300 pages in about three days, but after that I stalled. It wasn't that the book had become uninteresting, but that I lacked the sustained mental energy to juggle all the facts it required of me. My seven days came and went, and I hadn't even passed the novel's halfway mark. With plenty of thesis-related work to do, and several other English classes for which I had required reading, Middlemarch fell by the wayside.

It wasn't until I was done with finals and had turned in my thesis that I was able to settle into a Middlemarch routine that worked with the novel instead of against it. I started reading a chapter or two every night before I went to sleep, when I could, and I stopped treating it as the only book I was reading. Four months later, I am still reading it (I'm about 75% of the way through). Not a good strategy if I a professor had assigned it for a class, but since none of them have (yet), I'm taking the slow road and enjoying the journey.

*I am convinced that Rebecca's speed-reading and comprehension has nothing to do with the years of her life she has devoted to reading and everything to do with the fact that she is an alien and/or in possession of Torchwood-esque advanced technology which our puny human brains cannot fathom.

**This, to me, is the essence of being paid to attend graduate school in English.

Best Book to Read After Sarah Dessen

So Sarah Dessen may be the one writer I know who has long held the crown of YA contemporary QUEEN. (That's kind of an unwieldy title -- I might need to think about this phrasing in the future...) She's also a very good comfort author; her books are the ones I curl up with when I'm feeling a little gloomy. They're kind of the equivalent of a toasty warm blanket and really good ice cream. They are cute, flirty, fun, and I tend to dig them. But -- and I have to say this, I really do -- Sarah, you are in danger of losing your crown.

Why? Because Stephanie Perkins is on the scene. Stephanie's debut novel, Anna and the French Kiss, was released last year, and I thought it was DELIGHTFUL. In the most delightful of ways. What did I say about it before? Oh yeah, that Stephanie's writing is as smooth as hot chocolate going down your throat, that the romance between Anna and St. Clair is as light and buttery as the perfect, airy croissant, and that the discovery of Paris, is, well, Paris. Anna embodied all the frothy loveliness that I love about contemporary YA, and what's more, everything felt real. The characters, the evolving romance, the parents, the confusion. I believed in this story, more than I usually believe in contemporary YA.

Anyway... What more is there to say about this lovely book (and this lovely author?) Maybe I'll just sum up. Do you like Sarah Dessen and Meg Cabot? You are going to love Stephanie Perkins. Anna and the French Kiss is delicious, and you will not be disappointed. (Also, keep an eye out for Stephanie's next book, Lola and the Boy Next Door, releasing this September.)