Devouring Books: The Examined Life by Stephen Grosz

The Examined Life is another one of those books that cost 99p (Kindle Daily Deals, man), and, from it's description, I thought was worth a read. It's also another one of those books I thought I'd probably never read (or at least not anytime soon), but since the last book I read fitting this description was The First 20 Minutes, which was HI-larious, I thought this was worth a shot. Since I bought it and all...

The Examined Life is ostensibly a collection of case studies Grosz has collected working as a psychoanalyst, but they're also designed so that they can have a wider application to the lives of people who might be reading the book. This means that he'll describe the case specifically, and then make a general point about a state of mind, or coping mechanisms, or whatever the issues might be. I can see how for some people, this book might become a lightbulb moment for issues in their lives, but since it didn't really tell me anything I hadn't already figured out for myself, that's not really what it did for me.

This isn't to say that I didn't enjoy reading it. For me, it was like a little book of zen- filled with tiny reminders about faulty thinking mechanisms that can destroy your state of mind, and the idea that even if things are bad, they can be good again. I am in no way a well trained psychology student (I have an A Level in it, which equates to having studied it for two years) but I know enough to have my doubts about psychoanalysis, or at least about its limits and practical applications, so whenever Grosz brought it back to the parents (which happened A LOT) I rolled my eyes juuuust a little bit.

However. Maybe I'm just being picky, and this book could be genuinely useful and contain new information for most people. Maybe not everyone has read a lot of things about mental health. Here are some quotes for you* to judge the insight for yourselves:

"At one time or another, we all try to silence painful emotions. But when we succeed in feeling nothing, we lose the only means we have of knowing what hurts us, and why."

"We are vehemently faithful to our own view of the world, our story. We want to know what new story we're stepping into before we exit the old one."

"We all have a cheering voice that says 'let us start now, right away,' and an opposing, negative voice that responds 'I would prefer not to.' When we are in the grip of negativity, we lose our appetite for human connection."

"We can take on a catastrophe to stop ourselves feeling and thinking- and to avoid responsibility for our own intimate acts of destruction." 

See, to me, none of these things were particularly earth shattering. They are things I think it's good for me personally to keep in mind, but they're not things I didn't already know. Maybe there are a lot of things in this book that you might not know, but having lived for 20- odd years in this world, you probably do.

However. I did enjoy 'meeting' most of Grosz's patients, and I was really happy for them when, at the end of his essays (and, you know, months of psychoanalysis) they got better and resumed their lives as they wanted to live them. This was all good stuff, and, like I said, it really was a very soothing book to read. It kind of makes you believe that there are no problems so insurmountable that they can't be solved by talking about them, and that there is a little sentence out there that can dissect the things you are feeling, and what you can do about that.

It's not a terrible book, in other words, but it's something that I definitely wouldn't be bothered about reading again. I like my psychology a little bit meatier.


*although really they're just the most relevant ones to me, I think.

Devouring Books: The Keep by Jennifer Egan

"What are they giving you, the machines? Shadows, disembodied voices. Typed words and pictures if you're online. That's it, Danny. If you think you're surrounded by people, you're making them up."

Ah, Jennifer Egan. You read one of the greatest books you've read for a long time (maybe ever) and all of a sudden you're all obsessed with reading all her books. I'm referring of course to A Visit From The Goon Squad, and the fact that I now can't get enough Egan (since she's only written 4 novels, there's a cut off point to this, and it's after I've read Look At Me. But shh, that hasn't happened yet). And so, that brings us to The Keep.

I didn't enjoy The Keep as much as A Visit From The Goon Squad. That should probably go without saying, but I'm saying it anyway, and now you know the terrifying (understandable) truth. This doesn't mean that The Keep is a bad book, because it isn't, by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm not sure if I really enjoyed it as much as I wanted to. This is why you don't read an author's best book (so far) before you read the others, and consider my lesson LEARNED. Until I approach Look At Me with the same optimism, that is.

But The Keep. It's a story within a story (within a story, technically) so there are levels of narration and some complex things going on that you don't necessarily fully understand until towards the end of the book, where all is revealed and you kind of go 'ohhhh... I see that,' and everything slots together nicely in what I would like to describe as an Eganitarian way. Only... I wasn't sure I really cared about the revelation at that point because I wasn't hugely into the story? And I'm still not sure that I really care about it now? And I feel sort of bad about it and that's why I'm asking instead of telling you all this?

Let's talk more about the story/stories. The inner level of story concerns Danny, a thirty something who doesn't really know where his life has gone wrong, or where his really successful cousin's has gone right. Danny flies out to help his cousin set up his business-in-a-castle (I know) and finds it difficult to give up the technology to which he has become accustomed. This was possibly the most interesting part of the book to me- the idea that modern people have sacrificed imagination for technology, and that living through technology is not necessarily the way to go.

I find this interesting maybe because I'm not exactly sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, a lot of good things have happened to me because of the internet, and I wouldn't be without this blog or without those of you who I really really feel like I know now and I wouldn't have that without the internet. But, at the same time, when I'm refreshing twitter or tumblr for the millionth time that day, I sometimes wonder, you know, what else could I be doing with my life? While I get the impression that Egan is fairly anti-technology (or anti-too much technology. Or something) and that's her stand on it, I still appreciate the moment to take a step back and go 'hmm, how do I really feel about this?' So that's cool.

The outer story in The Keep is about the guy who's writing the inner story. I don't know how much I should tell you about him, but his existence is interesting because you then assume that hey, this other story seems like it might be fictional, so maybe I should pay more attention to this story, even though you know that this story is also fictional, since Jennifer Egan is not, as far as I know, a fortyish (?) male in a secure facility. I found it really strange though that I suddenly assumed, because of this book's structure, that this outer narrative was somehow 'truer' than the inner, and I thought hey, that's a pretty neat trick. So maybe I'm a little more impressed with this book than I am in love with it.

I don't know whether I think you need to read this or not. As a bit of an author completist (I'm more inclined to go by author than any other factor when choosing books) I'm tempted to say that of COURSE you should read all of Egan's books, but now that I've finished this one, I feel like I might think it's relatively skippable. AND NOW I FEEL BAD. Just, go and read A Visit From The Goon Squad. That definitely won't disappoint you.

Devouring Books: The Newlyweds by Nell Freudenberger

"It seemed incredible that it could be the same road, the same asphalt that they had travelled so many times together. You thought that you were the permanent part of your own experience, the net that held it all together- until you discovered that there were many selves, dissolving into one another so quickly over time that the buildings and the trees and even the pavement turned out to have more substance than you did."

I only got The Newlyweds out of the library* because I really really liked the cover. I mean, look at that cover. It's awesome. I did honestly believe that I would probably take it back unread after feeling guilty about it staring at me for three weeks, but then I ended up on a train and it was the only thing I had to read and it was Bout of Books time, so. It got read.

I feel like by telling the story like that, I'm doing this book a disservice, because I didn't only read it because I had nothing else to read. I mean, that was true of the twenty minute train journey, but then I was at home and I had, you know, all the other books in the universe to read but I didn't because The Newlyweds was good enough to make me want to keep reading, which is sort of the only thing I ask for from books. Sort of.

The Newlyweds is not so much the story of two newlyweds as the story of one of them. Amina is from Bangladesh, and when we first meet her she is married to George, an American she met online and left everything she knew for. The reasons for this are complicated- it's never hidden that Amina wanted to move to the US for the opportunities it held, but she also wouldn't have done it with any old man and she and George had a genuine connection. George's reasons for marrying Amina, it becomes clear, were also complicated and slightly messy, and so it's difficult to get a clear idea of exactly what their feelings are for each other. It's especially difficult in George's case, because this novel is told solely from Amina's perspective.

Amina's perspective, as the immigrant in the US (a muslim immigrant, at that) is undeniably the most interesting one in the novel, and it's the one it relies on to be appealing to the reader. If you don't find Amina sympathetic, you're probably not going to want to carry on reading The Newlyweds, because her thoughts and opinions are the only ones we get. Luckily I liked her a lot, but even so, I would have liked to have had some insight into the other characters heads because it's sometimes difficult to know where they're coming from. It strikes me, though, that this is probably intentional- Amina isn't aware of the motivations of all the other characters, and so we aren't either. Which is fair enough.

The one thing that urked me about this book is that, in spite of it being called The Newlyweds, it wasn't really about the newlyweds. It was at least about one of them, obviously, but the majority of this book is devoted to Amina being really really worried about her parents and the urgency of getting them to America. The final third of the book is SOLELY about this, and I don't know, I just didn't find it that interesting. It wasn't that I didn't want Amina to be reunited with her parents, or that I wanted them to not go to America, but I found the relationship between Amina and George (and his family) a lot more interesting, or intriguing, I should probably say. There's nothing intriguing about Amina's relationship with her parents- she loves them and wants to be near them and they all need each other in equal measure and this does not interest me so much (needy parents are something I might have too much experience of...) and I eventually got kind of frustrated with how much of the story was focused on this. But that might just be me.

So basically. This book was fine but I'm not desperate to discuss it with anyone, nor do I want everyone to read it because their lives would be complete without it. I think, in the end, I liked the premise more than the actual execution, and although it was pretty readable (I finished it in two days) I didn't really feel many things about it and I suspect I will have forgotten about it in a few weeks. So if it falls onto you somehow then I'll allow you to read it, but otherwise, don't even worry about it.

*and then bought it because I thought I wouldn't read it for ages but then I did straight away and I don't even want to keep it and grrrr this is why I'm poor

Devouring Books: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

"Humans can be fairly ridiculous animals."

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is just the latest in the long line of 'this is how we should be eating' books that for various reasons I choose to read, a lot (See also: Skinny Bitch, Eating Animals) and it covers food issues I hadn't even thought about before (mainly because we're not really trained to think about them anymore) namely, seasonal eating. Considering how into food issues and things I am, I feel like I should have been IN LOVE with this book, but... Things didn't really turn out that way. You'll see.

So. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle ostensibly follows Barbara Kingsolver and her family as they go through one year of eating only things that are in season and locally grown. Helping with this is the farm they own, on which they grow their own produce, and the fact that the book begins with their move from Arizona (where, I very reasonably assume, nothing grows) to... I want to say Virginia, but I can't remember exactly where and I can't be bothered to find the book to tell you. But somewhere greener, anyway. And the book is basically their trials and errors and what they ate and how good it felt and la la la la etc. All that was fine.

I so so completely agree with so much that's in this book, I'm pretty sure we should be eating seasonally for the sake of our palates and um, THE WORLD. Like, last night I had pasta and vegetables for dinner, and the vegetables were tenderstem broccoli and asparagus and they came in a joint pack thing, and on the packet it said Peru/Kenya. Peru. And Kenya. I did some research (Google) last night and Kenya is 6,600 miles away and Peru is 6,160 miles away IN THE OTHER DIRECTION.

And clearly this is ridiculous and I shouldn't be allowed to eat like that, and it shouldn't really even be a thing that's allowed, but it is and I can't stop it, but I can make choices that means I'm not involved in a system where my food has been flown nearly 13,000 miles to get to my plate.

So clearly I applaud Kingsolver's whole mission and her ideals and yeah, seasonal food tastes better and so on (although I haven't ever had a bad piece of asparagus, and I'm not sure I've even eaten it in season but this is SO NOT THE POINT). But ugh, dude, Barbara Kingsolver and her ideals. (I KNOW. I KNOW.) I mean, I have some issues and they're mainly hypocrisy issues, and I might just be being a weenie about them, but I really feel like I have some points here. So just listen up.

FIRSTLY- the entire book is based on the idea that,  essentially, if you can't get it from within 100 miles of where you are, you shouldn't be having it. You'd think there'd be no exceptions to this, which is weird because I vividly remember a section of this book where Kingsolver's husband says 'for things like tea and coffee and spices that don't grow locally/in the US, you should totally buy fairtrade versions of them'* And you know what? No. Either EVERYTHING that's flown in from abroad is bad, or nothing is. You can't just pick and choose what you'll accept being ferried across the world because, I don't know, you really really like coffee. That's just STUPID.

SECONDLY- part of the objection to non-locally grown produce presented in the book are the amounts of petrol burnt to get it to our plates, which, you know, I have no objections with. But over the course of the book, the Kingsolvers take both a road trip and a flight to Italy, without once mentioning the amount of pollution caused by human travel. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that they shouldn't ever have holidays or things like that, but if EVERYONE did that? It wouldn't be good, and it wouldn't have been non-fitting for them to somehow justify their travel, like by planting 100 trees after it or something.

THIRDLY- Kingsolver tries to argue that Farmer's Markets are cheap. Farmer's Markets (at least in the UK) are not cheap. And I'm not even saying that's a good enough reason not to buy stuff from them (although for a lot of people it's the reason why they CAN'T) but saying that the things they sell are cheaper than you would get them in the supermarket is just not true.

FINALLY- (and it very nearly was finally- I almost threw the book down in disgust after this) the meat thing comes up. OBVIOUSLY I have feels about eating meat, and Kingsolver does too- She stopped eating CAFO animals (basically, factory farmed ones) many years ago, which essentially meant not eating meat, at the time. So I was like 'YEAH!' But then, Kingsolver kind of undermines this (seemingly to make herself feel better about eating meat again, which she does) by ridiculing the entire idea of vegetarian and veganism. And I was kind of shocked, actually, because up until that point I was like 'yep, evil food industry' and 'yep, baaaad pollution' and then she starts spouting shit like:

"To envision a vegan version of civilisation, start by erasing for all time the Three Little Pigs, the boy who cried wolf, Charlotte's Web, The golden calf, Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Next, erase civilisation, brought to you by the people who learned to domesticate animals. Finally, rewrite our evolutionary history, since Homo Sapiens became the species we are by regular binges of carnivory."

And I just honestly and truly fail to see how this is at all relevant! It's not that vegans try to rewrite history (and, GOD FORBID we lose the Three Little Pigs because that's a thing that would happen and makes complete sense...) AT ALL, but that they CHOOSE to eat in a certain way that seems less harmful to the planet than just eating whatever the fuck you want and why does that sound familiar... OH YEAH, IT'S WHAT YOUR ENTIRE FUCKING BOOK IS ABOUT?! I mean, really. So annoying.

But apart from making me want to stab her in the face? I don't know. I feel like I want to recommend this purely because there's quite a lot of information in it about the EVIL that is the food industry (in the US, but you KNOW it's happening everywhere) that I may have already known about because I know too much, but you might not, and also just because I really find myself agreeing more and more with this whole eating seasonally thing, and WOAH why don't we do that anymore, it makes no sense. But all those other things really did piss me off...

Ok, I've got it. This book is good as an introduction to how we should probably be eating, but if you're already kind of well informed and/or a non-meat eater who threatens the existence of Charlotte's Web (seriously?) I'd probably give it a miss. As it is, I'm not sure I'll ever forgive Barbara...

*I'm totally paraphrasing. Obviously...

Devouring Books AND Films: (The) Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick

"I am practising being kind over being right."

I read The Silver Linings Playbook a really really long time ago now (OK, I finished it the day after my birthday, so... 3 months ago. But that's ages!) and even though I read it in two days which normally means I REALLY like something, in reality it was the first book I read on my Kindle and basically I was just overly excited about that. About the book? Not so much.

So, time went on and I still hadn't said anything about The Silver Linings Playbook, so I thought, 'why not wait to watch the movie and discuss them together?' Which was an excellent brain idea (nice work, brain) and meant that I didn't have to think about it for a while because I was on a payment holiday from Lovefilm. So, I got the movie and watched it, and now it's more than a month later and I still have nothing to say. So obviously this is going to be SO FUN to read. You're welcome!

OK, my initial thought has to be that I liked the movie better than the book. This isn't just because Jennifer Lawrence was there (I mean, it doesn't hurt. But I liked her character in the book plenty, too) but more because it takes the end point of the book (the 'big reveal' about Patrick's condition) and plops it basically at the beginning, so that with the film you actually get to see Patrick's recovery with a full awareness of his condition, whereas in the book, he's more just wandering around acting simple and confused and sort of like there's nothing wrong. There are merits to both methods, I suppose, but the movie was less annoying and Pat was less... simple-seeming, and that was definitely a bonus.

All of which meant, of course, that the movie was able to be a lot more rom-com-esque than the book, which isn't necessarily the worst thing in the world, and meant that the central storyline wasn't completely based around American Football (GOD that was off putting in the book. I mean, I seriously barely knew what anyone was talking about for half of it.) and was a lot more focused on Tiffany and Patrick and the evolution of their relationship. So that was fun.

Possibly the best change the film made, though, was changing the character of Patrick's dad (Pat Snr, if you will). In the book he's withholding, fiercely and almost life-cripplingly (his family's lives, not his own) superstitious, completely unsupportive of his mentally ill son and his wife who is trying to care for their mentally ill son, and just generally cold and ungiving. In the movie? He's Robert freaking De Niro. But also, he tries, which is the the main distinguishing feature between the two characters, and which makes movie-dad my favourite. I mean, I could cry at how good he is at trying to be a good dad, mostly because of how terrible book-dad is. And it's not even that book-dad isn't a true representation, it's just that movie-dad is so much more pleasant to be around. And he's Robert De Niro, so yeah.

Now, much as I do genuinely prefer the movie and enjoy it more than the book and so on, I managed to screw it up for myself somewhat by being a moron. So here's the thing: I was watching the movie, and even as I was doing so, my idiot brain was going 'well, this is wrong', 'why have they done that now?' and even, FFS, 'Why doesn't it revolve around American Football more?' And I don't even know why! I genuinely approve of basically all the changes the movie made (I even approve of Bradley Cooper! And I almost never approve of Bradley Cooper!) and still my brain was telling me it was wrong. I can only put it down to a lifetime of disapproving of the changes movies make to books, so I'm now hardwired to complain about it in my brain. Like an idiot.

So. The idiocy of my brain aside, I like the movie. The book was fine, but nothing special, and the movie was better- although, if I'm honest, neither of them really lived up to my expectations. Still, all things considered, I would totally watch the film again but I probably wouldn't re-read the book, and that is basically all you need to know about which form I think one should experience Silver Linings Playbook in.

Devouring Books: The Invisible Circus by Jennifer Egan

"The vision tumbled over Phoebe with the force of revelation: she would stand somewhere and look back, she would live a life. Until this moment, she had never truly believed it."

Hey, remember when I read A Visit From The Goon Squad and it was awesome? Well, since then I've been keeping a bit of an eye out for other Jennifer Egan books, and found some and then, obviously, since I'm me, I didn't read them. BUT THEN: Alice and Megs both read Goon Squad sooort of recently, and it made me feel all loving and longing towards Egan, and so I picked up The Invisible Circus and read it. Obviously. Since I wouldn't be telling you about it if I hadn't read it. Ahem.

The Invisible Circus is Egan's first novel, and it's basically a coming-of-age tale about Phoebe, an 18 year old whose entire life so far has really been shaped by two deaths- those of her father when she was about 6, and her sister Faith when she was 10 (and Faith was 17). It is Faith's death that has the stronger impact on her, because Faith was deeply involved in being a big ole hippy, and in true younger sister style (HAH) she looked up to everything she did and thought, and then all of a sudden she was gone. This is kind of where we meet Phoebe at the start of the book, before she sets off on an impromptu trip to Europe to trace Faith's last steps and along the way she unexpectedly finds the beginnings of who she's going to be.

Shit, you guys, that might be the first time I've ever written a synopsis on here, and now I'm ruining it by being excited that I actually did one. But look, I did! This feels very much like a book that's pretty easy to sum up in a few sentences, which isn't an insult so much as just, like, this book knows what it wants to say and sticks to that game plan pretty rigidly. It was nice to read this and realise that Egan is just as good writing in a straightforward and traditional narrative as she is at being innovative and amazing (Seriously, Goon Squad. You want to read it) and really, for a first novel, it's pretty darn good.

Here's one thing that wasn't so great- Phoebe has a lot of memories from the time her family knew her father was sick (so, when she was 5-6) and they're very... vivid. And I'm not saying that she wouldn't be able to remember these things, but she ascribes a lot of meanings to things that she absolutely wouldn't have been able to have as a five year old, and even though she's 18 and recalling all these things to the reader, it's still pretty clear that she's supposed to have thought these things as a child. Which, really, was waaaay unrealistic and quite clearly used for symbolic purposes. I'm not against symbolism AT ALL (when it's done well, a la To Kill A Mockingbird) but here it was just a little bit heavy-handed and at the expense of the character.

Having said that, though, Phoebe as her older self is a character I have a lot of time for. She's very young (not just in age, but in a worldliness sense too) and feels constantly overshadowed by the memory of her sister- or, not even overshadowed so much as let down by the fact that she'll never have the experiences her sister had because, well, it's not the sixties anymore. The thing that really sold this book to me (other than, you know, Jennifer Egan's name on the cover) was the idea of the lost era of the peace and love (and drugs and stuff) of the hippies, and the way Egan covers this is excellent. There's kind of a gap between Phoebe, who watched it from the outside and wishes she'd been a part of it, and the people she meets who were a part of it, but still kind of feel like they were on the outside. Here's one dude's thoughts on the whole thing:

"'The weird thing about that time... is in a way we were nostalgic for it even while it happened. I think it had to do with constantly watching ourselves, on drugs, the whole out-of-body thing, but also on TV, in the papers. We were news. Whatever we did felt so big, so unbelievably powerful, almost like it was happening in retrospect. I've never felt anything like that, before or since. It wasn't real life. Which I guess is what made it great.'"

Yeah, I just... I'm never going to NOT be sad that I was never a hippy, guys. But I still think this is a really interesting perspective on that whole time, nonetheless.

Here's the bottom line on this book- it was good but not great, especially not in the way that A Visit From The Goon Squad was (why am I even comparing them?! I feel like a jerk) and even though I enjoyed reading it, I never felt like I had to read it or I would die (which, as we all know, is the best feeling). Jennifer Egan always writes the lovely words, and that's no different here, and even though it hit some of my hotspots (write 'hippies' or 'flower children' or 'the sixties' into your book and I'm there), it definitely didn't hit all of them and I haven't even told you about the bit where she has sex A LOT and really it starts to feel gratuitous. 

I've just realised that this is the worst bottom line ever, so here it really is- it's not the greatest book ever, and it's not even Egan's greatest book, but it's still worth a read, especially if you're all into hippies and coming-of-age stories and also in looking at the development of certain writers because there are definitely points of excellence here where you can see the writer Egan is going to become. So, yeah. Read it? If you want. But you don't have to.