MINDLESS LIT

Hmmm.  So, the last time I posted here was October 10th.  Almost three weeks ago.  Shows you what my life is like right now.  If you read my most recent entry in the windmills you'll have an even better idea.

I've read some truly awful books in those three weeks, gotta tell ya.  Not a pretty picture at all.  But after I finished The Tree Bride and realized I had absolutely no coherent idea of what it was all about (a complicated story of India when it was the British Raj, told in contemporary voices as well as historical ones; ranging from coastal California, to England, the high seas, and the sub-continent of India), I decided I was currently too stupid to read complicated literature. 

So, my diet of dreck has included two of the worst books ever:  Hawke's Harbor, by S.E. Hinton, a foray into supposedly adult literature by a young people's author of some note, and Playing with Boys, by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez.  I read the Hinton book only because it was placed, give me a break, in Delaware.  The location is fictional, in more ways than one, it matches noplace I know in coastal DE.  And it includes a vampire.  And it has a happy ending, sort of.  Bad bad simplistic sappy writing, terrible story, implausible characters.  Don't bother. 

Valdes-Rodriguez wrote a silly but enjoyable book a year or two ago, The Dirty Girls Social Club, about a group of Latina women friends and their lives, loves and shopping.  It was a fun read, so of course I thought this one would be too.  It was probably the worst book I've ever read.  But, what about this, I read the whole damn thing!  I kept believing, hoping, that it would get better any minute.  It didn't.  If you enjoy reading mainly about brand-name clothes, shoes, handbags, cars, and how to wear and accessorize the former while riding in the latter - then, sure, go ahead, knock yourselves out, read Playing With Boys.  Otherwise, go have a partial lobotomy, it will feel just about the same.

And why am I so stupid right now?  It's the election, my friends, it's deep levels of worry and stress.  I've been reading lots of other stuff besides crappy novels (And I didn't even mention Robert Parker's Melancholy Baby, the latest, and the worst, in his female PI series starring Sunny Randall.  At this point I'm sure Parker's computer writes his books all by itself, he's put in some kind of program that just changes a few locales, a few wisecracks, a few names.), mainly having to do with Dubya's insane and insaner conviction that Jesus talks to him and he's the only one he's listening to.  Most people who believe this sort of thing are tightly wrapped in institutions, but this one is our president. 

So I'm off to the library for a new collection of crappy novels.  There's still a week of latenight reading to go.  After the ballgames are over. 

THE LOVE WIFE - A WORK IN PROGRESS

It's always my intention to post here at least once a week, but I see I haven't managed to keep that intention too well lately.  Another paver on the road to hell, I guess.  I have been managing to keep posting on my political/personal journal in these busy days.  And, amazingly enough, I am also continuing to read.  Just not able to write about what I read.  As I've said before, with a choice between reading and talking about what I read - reading wins, by a large margin. 

Last weekend I was held spellbound by Gish Jen's most recent novel, The Love Wife.  She wrote one of my all-time favorite novels, Mona in the Promised Land, some years ago, and this is the first thing I've read by her since then.  It's even better.  G (my partner) is this weekend captured in the same way by this story of a bi-cultural family in the Boston suburbs trying to deal with a major change in their busy lives.  Gish Jen is herself a Chinese American, and her books deal with families coping with cultural and generational problems.  As both G and I have multicultural or multiracial extended families, through marriage or adoption, we are always interested and involved in this family situation.  We have some faint connection with the problems and joys it brings.

The Love Wife is told in multiple voices, every member of the family tells his or her part of the story, the voices mingle, follow, pick up the thread from one another, pass it on to another view, another side, of the tale.  It took me a few pages to fall into the pattern, the rhythm, but once I did it seemed entirely natural.  It is an interesting story-telling device.  There are no descriptive or narrative passages, and the plot is not linearly revealed; it winds backward and forward, there are asides and footnotes, there is even a voice from the grave - Mama Wong, even dead, is never gone.  If this sounds difficult, hard to follow, believe me - it isn't. 

Don't have time to finish this review right now, I do hope to be back later this evening.  I'm off to Rehoboth Beach for the last voter reg weekend marathon.  Our forms have to be returned by 4:30 Tuesday, to Dover. 

A PostScript, a week and a half later:  No, I didn't get back to finish this review.  You can never step into the same river twice.  Not even on the same day.  The river has flowed on, extensively.  I've read three books since this one, though this one stays with me.  I'm going to give you links to some "real" reviews of this novel, and hope you find the time to read it soon.