Soon I Will Be Invincible: Why can't we all just get along?

The book opens from the perspective of Doctor Impossible. He's the smartest man in the world, according to . . . himself. And thanks to a lab accident, he also happens to be stronger than the average man and have bullet-proof skin. Oh and he’s in prison for the 12th time.

“I’m not a criminal. I didn’t steal a car. I didn’t sell heroin, or steal an old lady’s purse. I built a quantum fusion reactor in 1978, and an orbital plasma gun in 1979, and a giant laser-eyed robot in 1984. I tried to conquer the world and almost succeeded, twelve times and counting.” (pp. 4–5)

Super-villain problems.

And here to provide the hero perspective is a cyborg named Fatale. She used to be a woman of average appearance vacationing in Brazil, until she was hit by a dump truck and scraped 40 feet against the side of a building. When she woke up 4 months later, she didn’t remember why she was in Brazil or who she had been there with, and she had no hope of leaving her hospital bed unless she took the deal being offered to her by a mysterious corporation. So she signed the contracts, and they made her into the next generation of warfare, replacing 43% of her original body weight with metal and plastic.

But after running only one high-profile mission, the super soldier program shut down and disappeared without a trace, leaving Fatale a lonely cyborg without a past or a purpose.

Sincerely, The Military.

UNTIL she received an invitation from the Champions, a disbanded group of heroes reuniting and recruiting a couple of new members to search for their missing once-leader, CoreFire—Doctor Impossible’s nemesis and one of the few truly invincible superheroes.

The overarching theme is a question Doctor Impossible poses in varying ways throughout the book:

“But why do we rob banks rather than guarding them? Why did I freeze the Supreme Court, impersonate the Pope, hold the Moon hostage?” (p. 7)

Why try again and again to take over the world when you know you must lose?

There’s a lot to keep you entertained. The cast of heroes and villains alone is endlessly fascinating, some clear parodies of familiar comic book characters (e.g., Blackwolf: former Olympic gymnast, millionaire, user of bare knuckles and gadgets, haver of zero superpowers) and others . . . something else altogether (e.g., Mister Mystic: Two-bit magician and con artist who apparently discovered real magic at some point, although no one is exactly sure what his powers are).

Let's not get carried away.

The tone is equal parts earnest and slapstick, with a dash of satire thrown in for good measure. And while the plot isn’t much more than you would find in the latest Pixar animated feature, that just means it doesn't get in the way of action like this:

"We faced off a moment in silence, and then he reached for me. He put his hands on me, a scientist! I recall there was a brief pursuit around the command console. I may have flailed at him once or twice. I managed to inform him, before passing out entirely, that he hadn't heard the last of Doctor Impossible." (p. 206)

The Keep: It MIGHT sound like I didn't like it

I should preface all this by saying that something strange happened when I read the book jacket: I didn’t comprehend a word of it. Standing in the bookstore, I was convinced this was a gothic novel about two young female cousins living alone in a castle . . . which didn’t necessarily grab me, but Jennifer Egan’s name was right there on the cover.

I kinda like her.

Well, when I got it home and the first page opened on some dude named Danny, I was like, “That’s no lady.” And then when there was a portable satellite dish in his bag, I was like, “MODERN times. What am I even reading right now?”

I want to make sure this doesn’t happen to you, because it’s jarring. The book is about two BOY cousins. Adult ones. And the story is set in present-day Europe. Austria maybe? No one seems to know. But Howard, the one boy-cousin, purchased an old castle he's planning to turn into a resort. And Danny, the other boy-cousin, was in the middle of some drama in New York, so when Howard said he would pay Danny's travel expenses if he helped prepare the castle, he was amenable to that idea. The trouble is, Danny hasn’t seen Howard since they were kids, and there’s a big Past Event hanging over their relationship. So Danny has the nerves about seeing Howard again, and it doesn't help that it's happening in this crumbling, ominous castle in Germany or possibly the Czech Republic.

If you think you have a grasp of what this book is about because of my excellent summary above, I should also mention this is a story WITHIN a story. And you also get some gothic, borderline-supernatural elements as a bonus.

Just for being you.

I think this was only Egan’s second book, and it has some hint of the perspective-shifting style she went on to perfect in that shiny, splendiferous novel some years later. But it’s not quite there YET.

I had one foot out the door for at least 3/4 of the book. I’ll be honest. She does a weird thing where she prefaces each line of dialogue with the speaker’s name, followed by a colon; there’s nary a quotation mark to be found. And if her shunning of traditional punctuation isn't enough, there are some other . . . odd occurrences.

But the last 1/4? Something clicked, and I saw that the stuff I’d been wary of wouldn’t have worked any other way. And the shift was so subtle and perfect that I almost didn’t notice it happening. And then I backed up several pages so I could experience it again. And it was beautiful THAT time, too.

Surprise blog-post twist!

On the basis of the whole experience, I’m gonna go ahead and recommend that you read this one. Just . . . remember it’s about boys.

Motherless Brooklyn: WebMD doesn't list symptoms for Rebel Against Society

Motherless Brooklyn is a take on the classic detective novel, sure to appeal to the Raymond Chandler/Dashiell Hammett/James M. Cain set. Aside from being staged in present-day Brooklyn, what primarily separates this book from the classics it pays homage to is its narrator, Lionel Essrog. He was a young orphan tapped to work for small-time mobster Frank Minna. Now he's a grown man trying to uncover the truth behind his boss-type father figure's brutal murder, under the guise of Minna's limo service/detective agency/front-for-ill-doings-about-town. Lionel also happens to have Tourette's syndrome.

For me, counting and touching things and repeating words are all the same activity. Tourette's is just one big lifetime of tag, really. The world (or my brain—same thing) appoints me it, again and again. So I tag back.

Can it do otherwise? If you've ever been it you know the answer. (pp. 5-6)

I'm not super familiar with Tourette's, but this is the best description of the condition I've ever heard. Ever-ever. And Lethem keeps DOING that.

My own name was the original verbal taffy, by now stretched to filament-thin threads that lay all over the floor of my echo-chamber skull. Slack, the flavor all chewed out of it. (p. 7)

So I'm sure you can imagine that Lionel's Tourettic impulses play a prominent role in his interactions. When he's around Frank and the other Minna Men (also orphans recruited as children from St. Vincent's Home for Boys), all of whom have known him since his symptoms first started manifesting in childhood, he can boop a 6-foot-tall man gently on the nose, shout "EAT ME, BAILEY," or whisper "doublebreasts" in the middle of a conversation, and no one will bat an eye.

But as he plays the role of detective to solve the mystery of Frank's death, he's thrown into situations where his Tourette's constantly threatens to interfere with his goal of uncovering valuable information. I mean, you can't just go around caressing strangers, says Polite Society.

And sometimes an impulse can put Lionel in physical danger. For instance, in a battle of wills with Albert the private security guard:

I began to want to grab at the nightstick in Albert's holster—an old, familiar impulse to reach for things dangling from belts, like the bunches of keys worn by the teachers at St. Vincent's Home for Boys. It seemed like a particularly rotten idea right now. . . .

As we brushed past Albert I indulged in a brief surreptitious fondling of his nightstick. (pp. 32-33) 

Aside from being positively edible, the writing FEELS classic. I would forget sometimes that the story wasn't set in the '40s. Then there would be a reference to Mariah Carey or power windows, and I would go, "EH?"

Oh look, moregoodwriting:

A part of each of us still stood astonished on the corner of Hoyt and Bergen, where we'd been ejected from Minna's van, where we'd fallen when our inadequate wings melted in the sun. (p. 79)

Have you ever felt, in the course of reading a detective novel, a guilty thrill of relief at having a character murdered before he can step onto the page and burden you with his actual existence? Detective stories always have too many characters anyway. And characters mentioned early on but never sighted, just lingering offstage, take on an awful portentous quality. Better to have them gone. (p. 119)

Now . . . I just need to make it about me for a quick sec.

For as long as I can remember, I've had these random impulses to do inappropriate things at just REALLY inappropriate times. I'll be sitting in a quiet room (church, for example) and think, "What if I just stand up and yell, 'I HAVE TO POO'?" Or I'll be making with the small talk at a restaurant and think, "What if I poured my coffee on this person's head?" Or, slightly more concerning, I'll be standing at the edge of something very high up (say, just for example, the Golden Gate Bridge) and think, "What if I jumped?"

The impulses aren't particularly strong. I have never, in fact, done any of those three things mentioned above. But is it weird that I even THINK about it? Do I have some excessively watered-down form of Tourette's? Or am I just a badass rebel, propriety be damned?

More important, will I be thinking about pouring hot liquids in your lap the next time we get together?

Me, at any given moment. Right now even.

The Last Policeman: An original novel from the man who gave us Android Karenina

There's a relatively slow-moving asteroid heading straight for Earth, and it will almost certainly wipe out all organic life upon impact. Thanks to modern science, everyone knows the exact day this will happen. NO thanks to modern science, there's absolutely nothing anyone can do to stop it.

Nope. You're all gonna die.

With roughly 6 months until the end of the world, people are coping primarily by walking off the job (going Bucket List, as they say) or committing suicide (skipping the List and going straight for the Bucket). So what we step into is a barely functioning pre-apocalyptic United States where there are so many suicides each week that the police department doesn't even bother to investigate them anymore. At the same time, the powers of local law enforcement have been amped up to help prevent widespread chaos, and being arrested for even a minor offense could mean sitting in a cell until the Big Kaboom. So the stakes are high, you see.

We find Hank Palace—a young patrolman recently promoted to detective when his predecessor decided he would rather be racing yachts—at the scene of an apparent suicide in the stall of a McDonald's bathroom. But he's the only one, including the dead man's family and coworkers, who isn't convinced it's a suicide, and he'll get to the bottom of this and bring the guilty party (if there IS one) to justice if it takes the rest of his time on Earth.

Because he IS the law.

He's not literally the LAST policeman, but he seems to be the last one in the city who cares to do his job responsibly, rather than to satisfy a power trip or get a reliable Internet connection. But the whole point is that doing his job at all is a little more complicated these days.

Still, the conscientious detective is obliged to examine the question of motive in a new light, to place it within the matrix of our present unusual circumstances. The end of the world changes everything, from a law enforcement perspective. (p. 115)

So there's THAT mystery to solve. There's also a little something in the realm of a conspiracy theory, which isn't resolved in this book because something had to be saved for the sequel (Countdown City, available now at a fine independent bookseller near you!).

I don't have feelings of love for this book. And I can't put my finger on what it was that fell flat for me, because the premise is clearly intriguing and I usually like stories about the end of humanity. It could be that I never felt fully connected to any of the characters. It could also be that my heart is made of aluminum cans and plastic wrap (fully recyclable). But I DID gasp and say "OH NO" out loud when a thing happened to one of the characters. So it wasn't a complete failure in the character development department. And I DO think I shall read the next in the series . . . eventually.

Can you just read this one and tell me if I should definitely like it?

Look how helpful I am.

50 Shades of Grey is standing between me and well-read? Do I have to arm-wrestle it?

So something happened (almost a month ago?), and I thought I was over it, BUT I AM NOT OVER IT. In fact, I just had a sort of internal rage-dialogue with myself in the shower, which is what led me to my computer with wet hair at midnight on a Sunday.

The folks at Book Riot posted a list of 100 recommended titles for those who wish to call themselves “well-read.” This was bound to be a controversial list no matter what ended up on it, because everyone has favorites that may not appear on THIS particular list for any number of reasons, and because the meaning of “well-read” is itself subjective. And I get that the purpose of the list is to represent a sampling from a wide variety of genres that would engender a sort of well-roundedness in the reader who tackles them all.

Well, 50 Shades of Grey is on the list.

The argument for its inclusion—as far as I can understand from the lively comments section—is that, whether we like it or not (we HATES it, Smeagol), it is a permanent fixture in popular culture and has made important waves among the readerly and not-so-readerly masses. The other part of the argument is that you can’t have an informed opinion about something unless you experience it firsthand.

Let me just say, I respect and am quite fond of the people who presented these arguments. I will forever and always look to them as People Who Know a Thing or Two About Books, and I admire the way they push the Literary Elite’s buttons on the regular.

But I really just have to call bullshit on this one.

The second part of the argument sounds uncomfortably akin to the one I used on my parents when they tried to warn me, based on their years of experience as adult humans, that my awful boyfriend was, in fact, awful. “But, Mom and Dad . . . how will I KNOW for sure unless I experience firsthand his meth-induced rage while trapped in a moving vehicle with him?” (True story.)

On a very basic level, I think we can all agree that triangulating opinions from respected sources (or, in some cases, just one REALLY GOOD source; hi, Mom and Dad!) will give us a pretty good idea of what we’re dealing with, whether the subject under review is a book or a potentially disastrous dating decision. And learning from other people’s mistakes so that we don’t have to make them ourselves is not inferior to firsthand experience and does not disqualify one from holding an informed opinion (notice that I specify informed opinion). The information just didn’t happen to come from experiencing the terrible thing firsthand. AND THAT IS OK.

The first part of the argument is a little bit more tricky and also the bit that sparks my shower-fury, apparently.

YES, correct, E.L. James HAS written a thing that has subsequently gotten people talking . . . and talking and talking. But has she added anything NEW to the conversation?

Let me just check on a couple of things here:

1. Is the main female character of 50 Shades of Grey still an infantilized adult virgin who repeatedly and nauseatingly refers to her “Inner Goddess”?
2. Is the main male character of 50 Shades of Grey still a wealthy businessman with “singular erotic tastes” and “the need to control”?
3. Does the plot still revolve around him dominating her through a BDSM crash-course on sexuality while she meekly submits at every turn?

The answer to all those questions is STILL and always will be YES.

So I am at a loss as to what this book is adding to the CULTURAL (pop or otherwise) conversation that might raise it above the level of Honey Boo-Boo, just for example. Because for one thing, BDSM erotica is not NEW, and for another, as far as I can tell, this particular specimen of BDSM erotica is just perpetuating the same old unhealthy message that has caused such a problem for women who want to be taken seriously since the beginning of time. That is BORING. I am bored with that.

And I don’t need to waste several hours of my life (a generous time estimate) reading this book to figure out that it's a waste of time.

If that’s not an informed opinion, then dammit, I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. But at least I have this cookbook that teaches me 50 things to do with chicken.

Except the opposite of that,
because I welcome your thoughts and comments.

Tell the Wolves I'm Home: Hits you right in the childhood

So this book is The Sad, right? That’s probably the one thing everyone hears about it. And whenever a book gets that reputation, our cynicism pops in for a visit (oh, who are we kidding, it never left). No one appreciates being emotionally manipulated by an author (*cough*John Green*cough*Markus Zusak).

But in this case, it was less like, “Look at this puppy: I KICK IT AND ALSO DIP YOUR LOLLIPOP IN A MUD PUDDLE,” and more like, “Remember the ’80s and how they kind of sucked the most for the gay community, and also how hard it was to be a teenage girl? Remember THAT? Let’s discuss.”

June Elbus is 14, and the year is 1987. She has an older sister whom she used to be close with but is now separated from by a gaping chasm called High School. She’s a little bit eccentric. She doesn’t have many friends her age. Who she DOES have is her Uncle Finn. He understands her better than anyone else in her life and lets her be just who she is. But Finn is wasting away in the grip of a serious disease—an automatic-death-sentence sort of disease. Since the name of this particular affliction isn’t mentioned on the book jacket, I feel obligated to warn you that this could possibly be a spoiler? So if you haven’t already guessed what the mysteeeeeerious illness is, read no farther.

Be sure to visit the snack counter on your way out.

Everyone came back with snacks, right? Because I'm sure you all figured out that Finn is gay and has, at some point before the story picks up, contracted AIDS. Because it’s the ’80s, no one yet knows how to protect themselves from this virus or even exactly how it's transmitted. And the stigma around AIDS is at its height, because with ignorance comes fear and with fear comes people braiding ribbons into the manes of their moral high horses. If you have AIDS, you must have done something to deserve it, or someone must have given it to you maliciously because you fraternize with the sort of people who would do something like that. Because AIDS only happens to Bad People.

Something about adding insult to injury.

The book follows June through this pivotal time in her life, showing how she and her family deal with the enormity of their loss and the conflicting feelings that come with fiercely loving someone who the world tells you is dirty and wrong and unlovable. It’s also about family dynamics at their most basic. About siblings. About mothers and daughters. About husbands and wives. It’s good, you guys. It’s really good.

And the writing? Not too shabby for a YA book (she says with her hands shielding her face, and also having recently read no fewer than five YA books in a row).

The sun kept on with its slipping away, and I thought how many small good things in the world might be resting on the shoulders of something terrible. (p. 233)

One thing I love about June is that she's kind of into the Renaissance period and visiting the woods by herself so she can pretend she is a lone maiden venturing out in search of medicinal herbs to save the people of her village. She might be a little old for make-believe, but time travel is an effective escape at any age.

I used to think maybe I wanted to become a falconer, and now I’m sure of it, because I need to figure out the secret. I need to work out how to keep things flying back to me instead of always flying away. (p. 350)

I identify with this character. I have an older sibling whom I was close to and then grew impossibly far away from without ever really understanding how. I also used to pretend that I lived in another time. I didn’t have woods to retreat to, but I frequently ventured into the backyard bushes to reenact scenes from Sleeping Beauty.

I played the part of the horse.

Even more than those somewhat superficial connections with June, I also have an uncle who died of AIDS. Because my family is fairly conservative and also lived far away from my Uncle David (he in San Francisco; we in Texas), there has always been a lot of mystery surrounding the whole ordeal—made worse by the fact that I was too young to be invited into ALL the details of his illness. I knew that he preferred men. I knew that he wore a lot of leather (and he looked gooooood, ya’ll). I knew that he was a little thinner each time I saw him. I knew that there was a fair amount of tension around that subject. I knew that he somehow understood me better than any of my other aunts and uncles, even though I saw him the least. (He MADE me a leather journal for Christmas one year because he knew I loved to write.)

And then one day he was just gone. And that was that.

So after I read this book, I decided to ask my dad more about that time. I asked him why none of us went to Uncle Dave’s funeral. (We just couldn’t make the journey to California on such short notice.) I asked him if they kept their distance because they disapproved of his lifestyle. (Partly.) I asked him if he had a partner to take care of him when he got really sick. (No, because his long-term partner, whom he met in England [if you’ve read the book, you will realize that this is a CRAZY parallel], also had AIDS and passed away first. But he was surrounded by close friends.)

It was a good talk. And I’m glad this book inspired it.

So go forth, my friends. Read and cry cleansing tears of crippling sadness.

Harry Potter Readalong: The Retrospective

It’s official, friends. I hereby join the ranks of Those Who Have Read Harry Potter. It’s a big club. But only a select few members have their own wands.

Ebony with Phoenix feather core. For threatening my enemies.

I don’t know if you realize this, but organizing a group of book bloggers who live all over the world to read the same books and then talk about them on the same day every week for 6 months running is a stupendous feat. Like herding cats? Is that the saying? And only our brave and fearless leader, Alice, our collective fondness for GIFs, and the scary-brilliant imagination of Lady JK Rowling herself could have provided the motivation to keep us all onboard. Also peer pressure (not just for making children smoke the cigarettes anymore).

As some of you may know . . . the past 6 months have been maybe the most difficult of my life. My world sort of fell apart right before Christmas, and it’s taken this long just to assemble the scaffolding to BEGIN the rebuilding process. And through all that personal journeying, I was simultaneously making my steady way onward from the cupboard under the stairs at Number 4 Privet Drive. They say you never forget your first time reading the Harry Potter series, and for me that could not be more true.

TOO MANY FEELINGS.

Makes your opponent's pee smell funny for DAYS.

The heat of my passion for Neville Longbottom would have been more than enough to carry me through, but I ALSO had reading partners who made me spit coffee every Friday, right on schedule. And sometimes we also cried. But we cried together. And then we looked at more pictures of post-puberty Matthew Lewis, and all was well again.

So thank you, friends, for making this first read so memorable.

To be followed by a 10-minute group hug.