Whine & Cheese

The End

Well, folks ... if any of you are still out there, after 10 years... it's time to say goodbye to Whine & Cheese. 

It's been dying a slow death for quite some time now, but with a recent rash of an insane amount of spam comments (dozens a day), I finally had a good reason shut it down.

Facebook and Twitter have certainly replaced blogging, and truthfully I am not sure anyone has the attention span to read (or want to read) anything more than a status update or a tweet.  (I plead guilty to that myself!)

Lately, this blog has just been a copy-paste of my book "reviews" from Goodreads and while I thought it was a valiant way to keep this blog alive, it seems increasingly silly and just added "stress" to keep it up-to-date.

I don't think all this will necessarily disappear... I am just downgrading to TypePad's "free" service at the end of the year.  Effective immediately (November 2013), I will no longer be updating it and closing all commenting to finally rid myself of dealing with all that spam.  At some point down the road, I won't renew the domain name, so who knows what will happen then.

To those that I befriended thanks to this blog, I am eternally grateful ... and will continue to see you on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads.

Whine & Cheese 2003-2013

 

 

Heart of Palm

Meet the Bravos: A dysfunctional family (aren't they/we all?) dealing with their often tragic past, scraping by in the present,and potentially breaking free of their rural Florida roots thanks to living on some desirable real estate.

While that might sound a bit heavy, it is largely quite the opposite. Heart of Palm, Laura Lee Smith's debut novel, is very fun and quick reading. I read it 70 page/day clip (2x "normal" rate), while having greater "time to read" availability, it's still a good indication/recommendation of the novel's readability and entertainment value.

Perhaps the only quibble I have is the title and cover of the book, both which suggest more of chick-lit romance or even Tennessee Williams-esque southern gothic vs. what it it is -- a rollicking and fairly redneck family saga.

I really don't know what more to say, so this will be a relatively rare instance of me keeping it proverbially short and sweet. Kudos to Smith for creating such a vivid (and humid) world, solid storytelling filled with well-rounded and memorable characters.

 

The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells

I think I am becoming a bit of a sucker for "alternative lives" books. Granted I haven't read *that* many, but I am enjoying exploring the themes of destiny/fate and trying to get things right in one's life, even if in these fantastical/sci-fi/time traveling situations.

I was worried reading this one on the recent-ish heels of Kate Atkinson's Life After Life. I was quite impressed with that book and knew it would be hard to top. While I don't think The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells is quite the literary achievement that Life is/was, Greta is a far more accessible/"easy" book and was different enough right off the bat, that I really did not find myself comparing the two books all that much, despite being cut from the proverbial same cloth.

I generally don't like talking about plots here (or at least try my best to speak of them... well, generally) as part of the joy of reading is discovering it all for yourself. But in this instance, it feels as if I can hardly say a thing! So if you are a slave to logic/reason, you'd be best to skip this ones as the whys and whats and hows of Greta and her impossible lives are going to be hard to bear.

But returning to the themes, while not particularly a religious being, I do find myself in a healthy struggle of believing one has control of their life, mixed with a healthy dose of things happening "for a reason." And while what's going on in the book isn't reincarnation -- which I don't believe either, I still like the idea of a "soul" working on things over and over and the desire/forward momentum to work to getting things "right." Well, enough of this mumbo jumbo... but as you can I like tossing stuff like this around in my head and this book certainly provided enough material to stir things up.

I also enjoyed the time travel aspect of it, in the ways Greer explored the changing roles of relationship and what was/was not acceptable in different eras.

Overall, a very quick, enjoyable, creative, fun, thought-provoking read.

 

We Live in Water

I am a fan of Jess Walter, even tho the two book of his I have read have been wildly different: the darkly humorous, edgy Financial Lives of the Poets and the warm, sentimental Beautiful Ruins. So while I entered this short story collection with high hopes...

... I still brought along my short story "baggage" to We Live in Water and that's where Walter ended up losing marks (well, stars) for me. Even in the best short story collections, the quality and personal preferences are going to vary from story to story. There are some homers (well, maybe more triples) as well as some swings-and-misses (mostly the very brief ones). At times it felt like I was reading Walter's outtakes, material that couldn't translate to a novel. There's a reason marathon runners don't compete in the 100-yard dash, but that said, my guess is a marathon runner still runs the 100 far better than non-runners. So to make it clear, Walter is an excellent runner but, in my opinion, is more suited for the longer distances.

I also am finding that I don't think a short-story collections is meant to be read in one-gulp. There was a repetitiveness of the washed-up white guy protagonist (not unlike the two Walter novels I've read), themes, and locale (many take place in Walter's hometown of Spokane). While these Walter trademarks are undetectable while reading novels years apart, I experienced a bit of fatigue reading these similar-but-different stories back-to-back-to-back, etc.

My favorites: the dark humor of "Virgo" where an editor uses his newspaper's horoscope column to seek vengeance on his ex-girlfriend, the worthy-to-expand-to-a-novel title story of "We Live in Water" as a son tries to uncover his father's secret decades ago, and in what is a pretty dark collection, the sweetness of hope/salvation thru good deeds to children in "Anything Helps" and "The Wolf and the Wild."

Overall, a like but not a love.

 

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

One of the positives about e-books is that the reader isn't spoiled by inside flap/back cover novel summaries/spoilers. I read Karen Joy Fowler's We Are All Complete Beside Ourselves based on general positive reviews and a catchy title (am always a sucker for those!). Other than knowing it was a story of a family and that a chimpanzee was involved, I knew little else, (and after the fact, certainly not any of the details that the Goodreads or any other book site blurb gives out).

While I am not sure anything would have necessarily been spoiled, it was still nice to not know the story. It is a rather odd and quirky one which I also tend to be a fan of, but for ultimately the novel did not do much for me. While the novel nicely explores themes of what makes (and un-makes) a family and of the intangible and moving target that are memories, particularly childhood memories, similarly I just couldn't quite find my grasp with the characters -- well, with one exception, Fern the chimpanzee. The easiest way to my heart is a story of an animal and Fern's story was heartwarming, but more heartbreaking, that that alone had me debating adding one more star on my rating.

Overall, I felt this had a lot of potential. I like the premise, just not some of the subplots (most branching from the protagonist's college era) and an ending that was perhaps too tidy and closure-seeking, tho still appropriately bittersweet. I find giving out 3 stars to be a near diss, but again try to remind myself in Gooreads-land that it means "liked it" -- and that's true, just wanted to "really like it" and it didn't quite get there.

 

Reconstructing Amelia

All that Kimberly McCreight's Reconstructing Amelia made me feel was (a) glad I wasn't in school when the Internet existed and (b) that I don't have a kid growing up in the Internet age. Sure there's a very good chance that I will die alone, but if kids today have to go through even an iota of what the characters do in this book, it's probably all for the best.

So what do we have here? Single, workaholic, lawyer, mom (Kate) trying to figure out why her daughter (Amelia) fell to her death from the rooftop of a private school. At first, it is ruled a suicide but via the trail of text messages, websites, and social media the truth slowly -- or, at times, quite quickly and conveniently -- reveals itself.

While this was a quick read, I experienced only brief periods where something wasn't nagging me. First, it was the proverbial "perfect storm" of mental whack-jobs. I'm totally okay with one (or two) whack-jobs in a novel, but they're so plentiful here it all got a bit ridiculous. It would be okay/forgivable if there was a cheesy/campy tone to the novel, but with the serious issue of bullying at its core that certainly was not the case here. Ultimately, it ends up being way too over-the-top, something that I accused Gone Girl (which this novel is unfortunately being put up against, i.e., "this year's Gone Girl") of -- but with that literary blockbuster I asserted there was an element of dark/black humor that allowed for its healthy dose of over-the-topness. Plus, adults going at it in quite messed-up ways has a bit more entertainment value and a (warped) sense of "fun", but again here, not so much with a dead 15-year old girl.

There was a great deal of potential here. The secret lives of teenagers (and parents!), the dangers of the Internet/social media, peer pressure/bullying, burgeoning sexuality -- but it was just thrown into a cauldron of craziness and plot twists (don't even get me started on the whole paternity thing).

And The Mountains Echoed

And the Mountains Echoed is Khaled Hosseini's third book and I am sure I am not alone in this being the third book I have read by Hosseini. Perhaps the one oddity is that I read A Thousand Splendid Suns before his monster debut, The Kite Runner. I think Hosseini is one of the today's great storytellers and I feel no differently after reading this latest book. That said, if I had to "order" the book I'd likely put them in the order in which I read them, tho all favorably rated and pretty tightly clustered.

One of the great things about reading all the books by an author is to see them evolve. Mountains is certainly Hosseini's most ambitious work yet. While still having Afghanistan at its center, the novel is Venn diagram. Each chapter a reboot of sorts, spotlighting different characters but always -- tho sometimes quite peripheral -- with an overlap/connection to the core characters. It was frustrating at times to be knocked out of the narrative, but in Hosseini's capable hands you quickly find your way back. But for those preferring more linear story, this might create a hurdle.

A good news/bad news scenario here is that Hosseini covers what is now familiar territory here. One of the reasons I was so enamored with Hosseini's earlier books was that he felt like such a fresh voice in literature, I had not read books like his before. On this third go-round, it kind of felt like I had read it before with similar story-lines (traumatic childhoods), settings (war-torn Afghanistan), tone/emotions, and themes. Not that there is anything wrong with that, in the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" department.

I remain a big Hosseini fan, the proverbial honeymoon -- where everything seems so fresh and new -- may be over, but I look forward to many more years of his beautiful writing and masterful storytelling and characters that get inside your heart and break it just a bit.

 

The Son

This one proved interesting, and not necessarily having to do with the actual book - but my review of the book.  As usual,  I wrote my review on Goodreads, really didn't think much about it, but then got a comment on it that got my proverbial goat.  So first, my book "review":

This is one of those books that didn't bear the weight of my expectations. Philipp Meyer's The Son certainly has been getting a lot of buzz -- recently named #2 book in Amazon's half-year review/best books of the year (so far) -- but it just seemed to fall short for me in many areas.

It is a multi-generational saga, "epic" for sure but never quite feeling "sweeping" or grand. I thought it started off gangbusters with great potential in the exploration of three eras in Texas history (settlement/Indians, cattle/Mexican border, oil), but it just never seemed to all come together at once (one storyline gets going at the expense of another).

While educational, eye-opening (caveat: there's quite a bit of squirm-in-your-seat violence), and interesting, I still never felt fully engaged/immersed. The connections / ties / legacy between the generations seemed to either be non-existent or a bit forced (the latter, particularly towards the end with an addition -- will just leave it at that, since it is sort of a spoiler-y detail).

And finally, and certainly no fault of Meyer's (and returning to those above-mentioned expectations), I could not "un-read" the comparisons to James Michener and Cormac McCarthy. I should know better by now that these tend to be tossed around: It's epic, so it's Michener. It's violent, so it's McCarthy. And honestly, I wish this novel was more of either of those two authors.

So, a whole lot of good ingredients that ultimately just did not come together in a totally satisfying final dish. But despite what seems to be some clear criticisms above, I was left with an overwhelming hazy feeling of a missed connection -- characters and stories that seemed to be held an arm's length away and wished I could have "felt" more.

So that was that, the comment I got on it, was this:

I disagree entirely with this review. It reads as a critique of what others have called it: Meyers doesn't call it an "epic." It is not Michener nor is it McCarthy. What appealed to me was the uniqueness of each voice, not to mention each character. This novel emerges as a unified whole. That the reader has to fill in a few blanks between generations only adds to the active joy of reading it. Meyers uses no "hooks" to keep us involved in his story. The characters themselves provide the links that form the story chain. Your piece reminds me of a critic in college who spent his entire column reviewing Errol Garner and blasting Garner because he wasn't Oscar Peterson.

This was my response:

It was not my intention to have my post be a critique of what other people called it. I think it is valid to explain what brought me to the read the novel -- in this case, high praise and the hope epic western in the vein of Michener and/or McCarthy -- and how my (high) expectations were not met. I am not blasting Meyer for not being Michener or McCarthy, perhaps trying to be too nice and not coming right out and saying I don't think Meyer is at their level, nor did I find this book is not better than other westerns, historical fiction, or "epics" that I've read (and if Meyer is not calling this an epic, he must be the only one who is not!). If we're rating and reviewing books here, we're comparing it to something or someone else, right?

So pretty interesting.  I am not a fan of book reviews that are plot regurgitations.  I like to "talk" about what brought me to read a particular book and my experience with the book, which includes comparisons to other books/authors I read.  That's what makes reading fun/interesting, we're all bringing different things to the table and get something totally different from it even if we give it the same rating.  Nevertheless, kind of fun to have some interaction on Goodreads -- so often it seems like all this just goes into a vacuum. 

 

Positron

I read Margaret Atwood's I'm Starved For You over a year ago not knowing (or who knows what the original plan/intent was?) that it was going to be an on-going series. While I thought that short-story was a quite nice standalone work with a helluva kicker of an ending, l was curious to see where it would go. But know having now read this omnibus of sorts of the first 3 "episodes" -- a re-read of Starved, plus Choke Collar and Erase Me -- I am thinking I should have left well enough alone.

I still enjoyed the dystopic world that Atwood creates here, people trading places on a monthly basis between a prison (Positron) and a Mayberry-ish suburbia (Consilience). While that premise alone defies some logic, Atwood lost me in the next two episodes with things that did not make sense to me. Without getting too spoiler-ific, my sticking point was how a participant in this social experiment has the control/power/access to manipulate the system and furthermore how these manipulations can go undetected (or at least not easily resolved) by what I assume to be an all-knowing, all-controlling Big Brother-y cabal that runs this world.

It could well be that I have just not got to the part where this is explained/unveiled, but given that the Positron series appears to be open-ended at this point I don't feel I have the patience, the memory/recall, or perhaps, worse yet, the interest to keep coming back for new installments every six months (??) or so. What started out so strongly, just now seems to be on unsure footing.

So while I thoroughly enjoyed the premise, as well as Atwood's prose, imagination and dark humor, I am thinking a serialized work-in-progress is just not my thing.

 

Further Tales of the City

With this post, I am officially two months behind in book posts as I just just started reading Volume 4 of my 2013 Tales re-read, oh well!  Slow and steady, right?

And there won't be too much to say here.  I am still enjoying  it very much, and while I recall the series "tail"-ing off at some point -- and thought it may have started here with the 3rd installment -- Further Tales of the City -- such was not the case. Although I had some trepidation at the start as I did not recall having fond memories of the emergence of Prue Giroux and the whole Guyana subplot, but alas it all charmed me in the end (even if it seemed to be at the expense of Mrs. Madrigal taking a bit of a backseat in this one).

So while the story has moved into the 1980s, it is still zipping right along. Very easy breeze-y reading as I read this one at the fastest clip yet, ~70-pages a day (tho my fellow Tales fans realize that is not that hard to do!). I feel a change a'coming and as I said I am not sure it is for the good, but I look forward to reading the next book in August (which is "right now" as I type!).