The Drowned World

I am glad I read the edition of The Drowned World with an introduction by Martin Amis. I found Amis’s essay about the book and how it fit into history enlightening. The idea of prescience in literature is not new, but it was a fresh concept for me.

The Drowned World is one horrific view of a world destroyed by man’s negligence. Of course, the world isn’t destroyed, but man’s ability to continue living there is drastically impaired. As always, nature adapts in amazing ways.

This was a short book about an Earth that no longer has cities, in which most of the land has been swallowed by water and the temperature is ever-rising. Fifty some years ago, this was probably not a common idea. With the rise of Global Warming and other environmental concerns addressed by the media every day, the idea of water encroaching our own habitat is less far-flung.

There was some excellent imagery throughout the novel, but one that struck me was: “So his descent into the phantasmagoric forest continued, the rain sweeping relentlessly across his face and shoulders. Sometimes it would stop abruptly, and clouds of steam filled the intervals between the trees hanging over the waterlogged floor like diaphanous fleeces, only dispersing when the downpour resumed.” (p. 192) I could easily imagine taking this walk with Kerans as he escapes.

This is certainly not a character study and many of the characters could have been fleshed out into a longer novel. Instead, this was a cautionary tale and a reminder to me that the idea of rising water levels is not new.

One Last Strike by Tony La Russa

This has been a brutal winter for me. The temperature stayed low far too long for my liking. But the promise of spring is in the air. The birds are chirping, the trees are blossoming, spring training games are on the television and my phone is blowing up with news of player trades and hopes for the coming season. That’s right, folks, spring is coming!

To prepare myself and to get excited about the season, I re-read Tony La Russa’s awesome memories of his 2011 season with the St. Louis Cardinals. Tony had an amazing MLB career and I count myself very lucky to have been living in St. Louis during part of his tenure with the team. I credit his baseball prowess with my own love of the game. I had been to games in other cities in which I lived, but prior to my Cardinals experience, I didn’t fully appreciate the specialness of baseball. Having fallen in love with the sport in their city, I will always be a St. Louis Cardinals fan. (Aren’t I lucky they make it so easy?)

Tony’s book focuses a lot on his last season as coach, but he also manages to weave history throughout the pages of this delightful book. The story of the fateful season is fraught with tension and I loved reliving the insanity that was September 2011 right into the post-season. I am sure sportswriter Rick Hummel helped to make this book special. For a work of non-fiction, I found it completely readable and enjoyable.

I know there will be people who have no interest in reading this book (Braves fans, Phillies fans, people who don’t like baseball), but for me and I am sure for many other baseball fans, this was a fantastic way to get excited about the upcoming season and the end of winter. The 2011 season epitomized why we watch the game: There is no sure thing and anybody could be the winner, even if you are 10 1/2 games back in August.

May spring bring bright days and plenty of rally squirrels!

Watchmen by Alan Moore

Late last year, I read my first graphic novel, My Favorite Thing is Monsters, vol. 1. It was nothing like I expected. This illustrated journal of a young girl in 1960s Chicago was surprisingly and compulsively readable. I am anxiously awaiting volume 2.
This experience made me more receptive to reading an earlier graphic novel, Watchmen by Alan Moore. Watchmen was much closer to my expectations: a group of superheroes fighting the evils of the world and discovering their own fallibility and humanity in the process. While reading, I was reminded over and over of the Disney Movie The Incredibles, a naptime favorite of both my nieces. The masked crusaders have been disbanded, but are called back into service when someone starts killing their own.
Watchmen is an example of why I don’t gravitate to graphic novels, it is very violent and the illustrations often make this violence more, well, graphic. I have never been a comic book person, I prefer my stories to come through creative uses of language and the written word. I am not sorry to have read this and I will continue to anticipate volume 2 of My Favorite Thing is Monsters, but I will not be actively seeking out further graphic novels to add to my list.

The Changeling by Victor La Valle

This book was tagged by multiple people as a HORROR book. I did not find it to be such. I can see some elements of horror with the supernatural climax, but through the majority of the book, it could easily have been any other story of loss, family and love. I found this title on the Tournament of Book’s longlist this year. There were quite a number of interesting titles found there and this was no exception.

I adored the story of Apollo. From his early entrepreneurial escapades, to his love of hunting books, to his self-confident mantra right through to his full accepting his role as husband and father. The hunt for his son took so much of the passion he had cultivated in earlier parts of his life and the challenges he faced were like nothing he had ever known. Who could have known there were so many eerie things in New York?

While I did not love the magical, otherworldly aspects of this father’s search for his missing son, I did find the emotional path to ring true. This was a cleverly written love story and one man’s understanding of the life-changing power of parenthood.

Book Summary:

One man’s thrilling journey through an enchanted world to find his wife, who has disappeared after seemingly committing an unforgiveable act of violence, from the award-winning author of the The Devil in Silver and Big Machine.

Apollo Kagwa has had strange dreams that have haunted him since childhood. An antiquarian book dealer with a business called Improbabilia, he is just beginning to settle into his new life as a committed and involved father, unlike his own father who abandoned him, when his wife Emma begins acting strange. Disconnected and uninterested in their new baby boy, Emma at first seems to be exhibiting all the signs of post-partum depression, but it quickly becomes clear that her troubles go far beyond that. Before Apollo can do anything to help, Emma commits a horrific act—beyond any parent’s comprehension—and vanishes, seemingly into thin air.

Thus begins Apollo’s odyssey through a world he only thought he understood to find a wife and child who are nothing like he’d imagined. His quest begins when he meets a mysterious stranger who claims to have information about Emma’s whereabouts. Apollo then begins a journey that takes him to a forgotten island in the East River of New York City, a graveyard full of secrets, a forest in Queens where immigrant legends still live, and finally back to a place he thought he had lost forever. This dizzying tale is ultimately a story about family and the unfathomable secrets of the people we love. (from GoodReads book page).