Simon Cowellish Guide to Spring Books
If I start a book and after a few pages don't feel like going on, it's not my fault. It's the author's fault.
Those words were once said to me at a party by a literate and book loving friend of mine, and they carried the force of genuine revelation. After years of required reading in school and you-have-to-read-this recommendations that fizzled, he had reached his limit. If a book didn't garb him pretty early, he was out. And it wasn't his fault.
I'd like to apply this Simon Cowell strategy to some new spring books coming out. I recently received "Buzz Books 2013," a download from various publishers that includes excerpts from "some of the spring/summer season's hottest books." There are twenty-eight total. I decided to pick ten titles at random and see which ones could hold my interest long enough that I would want to buy the full version when it's released. Here's how I voted: a book either gets the designation Beach Bag, meaning it was good enough out of the gate that I will buy the full version and read it this summer, or it's stamped Remaindered, meaning it will be available for the bargain price of $2.99 at Amazon in six months.
A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki. Beach Bag. This novel tells the story of a sixteen-year-old Japanese girl named Nao. Nao is bullied in school and suicidal, but before talking her life she want to tell the story of her great grandmother, who was a Zen Buddhist nun. The excerpt had me hooked from the start. Ozeki make's Nao's voice believable, and I was interested in learning the history of the grandmother.
Shakespeare Saved My Life, by Dr. Laura Bates. Beach Bag. Bates goes into prisons to teach inmates the Bard. This memoir starts mid-action and I was eager to read more.
The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls, by Anton Discalfani. Beach Bag. Simple, elegant sentences gently drew me into this excerpt. The novel, set during the Great Depression, is about a fifteen-year-old girl, Thea Atwell, who is exiled from her home and sent to a Southern boarding school for debutantes.
How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate, by Wendy Moore. Remaindered. "Spring sunshine warmed the ancient brick walls of the courtyards and chambers in London's legal quarter. The jet of water that leapt up thirty feet from the fountain in Fountain Court sparkled in the light before splashing nosily into its basin." The first paragraph is clumsily written and does not inspire confidence. These are the first two sentences. The second one is where the author lost me. Does a jet of water really leap? Does fountain water splash nosily into its basin, or is it more even, gentle sound?
The Astronaut Wives Club, by Lily Koppel. Remaindered. Koppel doesn't seem to have the insight to find out anything interesting about her subject -- either that or her subject just isn't that interesting. And it has nothing to do with sex. Who wants to read a book about the husband of Margaret Thatcher?
The Testing, by Joelle Charbonneau. Remaindered. A Hunger Games knock off.
Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work, by Chip and Dan Heath. Beach Bag. Much more than a Dr. Phil platitude-fest, the authors -- at least in the excerpt -- write with clarify and intelligence, and use examples at self-improvement that actually make sense.
Beg: A Radical New Way of Regarding Animals, by Rory Freedman. Remaindered -- or better yet, pulped. This one seemed to go on forever right from the introduction. Rory Freedman, the author of the Skinny Bitch series, has a voice like an annoying sixteen-year-old girl (she's actually an annoying thirty-something woman). Beg is about how much Freedman loves dogs, how much her love made her a better person, and how, like, it's really awesome how animals can make us, like, really awesome, too. If I was stuck on a cross country drive with Freedman, I'd pull a Romney and get on the roof.
A Constellation of Vital Phenomenon, by Antony Marra. Beach Bag -- but just barely. "Stegner Fellow, Iowa MFA, and winner of The Atlantic's Student Writing Contest, Anthony Marra has written a brilliant debut novel that brings to life an abandoned hospital where a tough-minded doctor decides to harbor a hunted young girl, with powerful consequences." Whenever I see so many writerly credentials lined up, I back away. The writing is usually just too precious, too revised-by-committee, too mannered, too Iowa Writers Workshop. Like the first sentence of A Constellation of Vital Phenomenon: "On the morning after the Feds burned down her house and took her father, Havaa woke from dreams of sea anemones." Sure, someone would have dreams, or even sleep, after a night like that. It reminds me of Pete Townshend's comment when asked about modern pop music, with its computerized perfection: "That's not really my thing. With The Who you could feel the blood coursing through the veins." Still, Marra spent a lot of money on tuition. I'll give it a shot.
The Interestings, by Meg Wolitzer. Beach Bag. "On a warm night in early July, the Interestings gathered for the very first time. They were only fifteen, sixteen, and they began to call themselves the name with tentative irony. Julie Jacobson, an outsider and possibly even a freak, had been invited in for obscure reasons, and now she sat in a corner on the unswept floor and attempted to position herself so she would appear unobtrusive yet not pathetic, which was a difficult balance." Yes. Yes, yes, yes. I care about these girls, I care about and empathize with Julie Jacobson, right from the opening paragraph. I want to know who the Interestings are, why they are gathered, and what will happen to them.
