If I wait until I have time to write a full post for each book I’ve read in the last ten days or so, I’d never get them done, so here’s a quick update:
Time’s Arrow by Martin Amis: I had read it before but didn’t remember much about it, other than that it’s told backwards — the protagonist is inhabited by a mysterious internal narrator, who experiences his host’s life backwards as it is lived forwards. Events and even dialog are given in reverse order throughout the book, as we come to and pass the formative experience of the protagonist’s life. The only Amis I’ve read and definitely worth the re-read.
The Birthday Party: A Memoir of Survival by Stanley Alpert: Fast-moving account of an amazing twenty-four hours in the author’s life — he was kidnapped by a trio of amateur thugs while walking in his neighborhood. They blindfolded him, took him to a friend’s apartment, and held him there while they used his ATM and credit cards for a spending spree. When they found out it was Alpert’s birthday, they offered him drinks, sandwiches, pot, and prostitutes. Then they let him go. What follows is even more exciting: the successful capture and prosecution of the criminals based on Alpert’s sharp observations and cool head.
If I Am Missing or Dead: A Sister’s Story of Love, Murder, and Liberation by Janine Latus: A moving story of two sisters married to two very different men, both abusers. Latus traces the roots of her relationship with her “perfect” husband to her troubled childhood. An excellent true story of how two smart, capable, lovable women fell prey to emotional, psychological, and physical abuse. Sadly, only one got out alive.
Kinfolks: Falling Off the Family Tree – The Search for My Melungeon Ancestors by Lisa Alther: I wanted to like this book but in the end it was too much Alther, not enough Melungeons. Alther is haunted by the idea that Melungeons number among her ancestors, and her family’s reluctance to talk about certain branches of the family tree fuels her imagination. Her search for answers takes her far from her roots in Kingsport, Tennessee.
Reading this book was a lot like having a chatty seatmate on a trans-Atlantic flight — I learned more than I wanted to know about the settlement of Virginia and the Carolinas from pre-Columbian times to the present, I read a lot of mildly amusing anecdotes about life in the South, and I got a brief introduction to ancestral-DNA profiling, but when all was said and done I was more than happy to say good-bye. Unfortunately, other people’s genealogies are like other people’s dreams — just not all that interesting.
