10/100: Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, by David Sedaris

This essay collection might be my favorite Sedaris book to date. There really isn't a whole lot else to tell you; Sedaris is hilarious and he writes with obvious affection about his family and friends, which makes his books highly entertaining and overall pretty easy to read.

9/100: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz

I'm really tempted to just say "This book is amazing, so please, do yourself a favor and go buy a copy of it right now," and leave it at that. No amount of praise I heap on The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao could adequately convey to you just how fucking good this book is.

I might as well try, though.

Wao is funny. It's smart, both streetwise and philosophically. Most importantly, though, it's honest. It unflinchingly describes the characters, the trials they face, and social and political unrest of the Dominican Republic in the past 50 years as well as the United States' implicit role. The narrative weaves in and out of the 1940's through the present day, though not in that order, and not always from the same person's perspective. The story itself is a brilliant mix of heartbreak and triumph and more heartbreak, pain, brutality, and hilarity. It's a coming-of-age-story not only about the titular Oscar, but also his sister, mother, and best friend, but to dismiss it as only that would be a huge disservice to Diaz. In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Diaz crafts one of the most impressive narrators, an incomparable voice who bulldozes through generations of history to explain the fuku that has haunted Oscar's family for decades, and just why our hero's life was so brief, yet wondrous.

I don't want to give away too much of the plot; as someone who started the book with literally no clue what it was about, I loved the way the story unwound without knowing what was coming next. I skimmed over the back cover, which is almost misleading given the depth of the story, but the basic premise is this: Oscar is an overweight nerd growing up in a New Jersey ghetto who dreams of writing the next sci-fi classic novel. He has terrible luck with girls and can't get a date to save his life, much to the chagrin of his Dominican family. His situation is blamed on the family curse - the fuku - that follows him to college and beyond, and finally back to the Dominican Republic. All the while, the family history is recounted by the primary narrator, Oscar's friend (and older sister's more-than-friend) Yunior.

If you're looking for an anecdote to all of the sugary sweetness you ingested over the holidays - a book that takes a smart, biting, tender look at familial and first love - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is perfect. I could go on and on and on, but the only thing I need to tell you is that this book is amazing, so please, do yourself a favor and go buy a copy of it right now.

8/100: The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood

Small confession: I've read this before. That's a fact I've decided to overlook in its inclusion on my list of 100 books for the Cannonball Read though, because the first time I read it was the summer before my senior year of high school. It was also required reading back then, another fact I've decided to overlook, because when I re-read The Handmaid's Tale last week it was for fun.

I love dystopic literature; it's probably one of my favorite themes. By the time I picked up The Handmaid's Tale, I'd long considered Animal Farm, 1984, Brave New World, and The Giver to be among my favorite books (I know The Giver is a kids' book, but it's incredibly powerful when you consider the major issues it confronts and makes digestible for younger readers). I was intrigued by Handmaid though, because Gilead, the society in which this story takes place, is a theocracy based completely on the Bible (or rather, gross misinterpretations of the Bible), whereas the aforementioned novels are primarily totalitarian regimes without a unified religion. Or, the state is the religion, whereas in Handmaid, the religion is the state (I know that doesn't sound like a distinction, but it is).

The Handmaid's Tale is pretty disturbing. Imagine a new society ordered into classes based entirely on one's reproductive ability, ruled by an elite few who are in total power. Those elite few have managed to infiltrate ordinary American society and upend the government, media, and pretty much every single aspect of daily life by brute force and inhumane tactics. Oh yeah, they're also fucking crazy and justify every reprehensible act they commit as a return to the original order of life, that is, one that attempts to follow a pretty perverted version of The Old Testament, with some St. Paul thrown in for good measure (he's the only New Testament figure I can think of that's mentioned in the book). The book is a critique of religious extremism that reduces women's roles to servitude; I'd contend that its aim is not to criticize any one specific religion, or even religion in general.

The story is told through Offred, a woman who is a Handmaid. As a handmaid, Offred belongs to a class of women designated to have sex with the military officers of the ruling class whose wives are unable to conceive. The Ceremony, as it's referred to, is the most depressing sex scene ever described on page: it involves the Handmaid, the Wife, and the Commander, but it is by no means a wild kinky time. It's an interpretation of the biblical story of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar. If you aren't familiar, Abraham is remembered as the father of Hebrew lineage. His wife, Sarah, was unable to conceive, so with God's permission, Sarah gave her Egyptian handmaid, Hagar, to Abraham to use as a concubine. Hagar bore Ishmael, who played a pretty big role in the start of Islam. In the time just before Gilead was instituted, infertility seemed to be becoming a widespread problem in America. Handmaids are an invaluable but subservient class of women in Gilead; they live in the house of the Wife and Commander to whom they serve, but they are allowed virtually no personal freedom and are under constant watch by everyone else in the household. Handmaids aren't even given real names - the names they have are a composite of the word "Of" and the first name of the Commander they serve. Hence, "Offred" is a servant of Fred and his wife, Serena Joy, a woman who was a televangelist in the time before Gilead.

Have I lost you yet? A lot of this information is revealed slowly over the course of several chapters (fear not, I'm not spoiling anything - this is all back story that's explained as it's interwoven with the plot). Margaret Atwood is an incredibly skilled storyteller; she immerses you in this horrific world where hope for a normal life is all but forgotten, yet there's just enough plot development to keep the reader guessing where the story will go. The Handmaid's Tale has several chilling aspects, but the most frightening part is that the transformation from America to Gilead is an all-too-recent memory for several of the characters.

You see, The Handmaid's Tale does not describe a culture that's been ingrained in the population for several decades, or even years; when the story opens, it has been roughly 3 years since the new regime was implemented. Offred's longing for the way things used to be is palpable. She misses her husband, her daughter, her feminist mother, her lesbian best friend, the ability to hold a job, to read and write, human touch, communication beyond the accepted formalities of Gilead, having an opinion, and being regarded as more than a viable set of ovaries. Offred misses choices, freedom, her real name, and a million other things she took for granted in her former life.

The Handmaid's Tale is, in a word, excellent. Even though it was written over 20 years ago and heavily references the 80's, it manages to avoid feeling dated. It touches on so many issues still pertinent to women today, the most obvious one being the argument that the extent to which a woman controls her body determines the amount of control she has over her life. I feel that abortion is harped on so frequently and the argument is often relegated into two mutually exclusive groups, the larger picture - namely, society's treatment of women - is oft ignored. There are glaring similarities between the conservative politicians who act in the best interest of unborn children rather than the personal rights of women, and the ways in which Gilead reveres the womb yet ignores the person who actually carries a child. It's a little appalling that the critique of religious fanaticism still feels entirely relevant, but that's a reflection of our current culture, not the book.

7/100: Loving Frank, by Nancy Horan

*I'd like to apologize for the poem in the last review. I could not think of a single thing to say about that book and was getting desperate to just be done with the review. I'm obviously not much of a poet, but I saved you the boredom of reading a really awful review.*

Loving Frank tells the story of the love affair between architect Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick, one of Wright's clients. My interest in this book was initially piqued because of the Frank Lloyd Wright aspect. As a Chicago native, I've been familiar with Wright since early childhood; the houses he designed in the late 19th and early 20th century are all over the Chicagoland area. I also recall watching a documentary on him in 4th grade for social studies, and being completely fascinated with his somewhat eccentric ideas that homes are extensions of nature. For a long time, I wanted a tree growing straight up through the middle of my family's living room, an enthusiasm my parents surprisingly did not share. Still, I was somewhat apprehensive about Loving Frank; I had somehow gotten the impression that reading it would be akin to reading a Bronte novel (pick any Bronte, I hate them all. No offense, Bronte lovers, they just aren't my cup of tea). I have absolutely no idea where this idea came from, the fact that it was about a love story in a vaguely Victorian era probably made me think it would be all stilted dialogue and furtive glances followed by hurried, stifled copulating. I also sort of recalled that there wasn't a happy ending to Wright and Borthwick's romance, and I feared the novel would just be dry, boring, and depressing. For the record, none of this judgment came from the cover.

I was so wrong.

Loving Frank is a thoroughly engrossing read. Mamah (pronounced May-muh), who starts the story as the wife of one of Wright's clients, is the central figure of the story, not Frank. She's a woman nearing her late thirties and profoundly unhappy in her marriage. Her husband, Edwin Cheney, is a loving father to their two children, a good provider, and supportive of Mamah's intellectual pursuits, yet Mamah can't help but feeling that something is lacking from their marriage: a deep, mutual love. Ironically, it is Edwin who brings Mamah to Wright's home in an attempt to convince her to agree to building a new house, which is the catalyst for Frank and Mamah's affair.

The affair builds slowly over the course of several years. It starts off as an innocent enough friendship, with Frank stopping by the Cheney household on the pretense of going over some detail of construction. Frank and Mamah end up conversing for several hours over art, nature, literature, each others' beliefs and dreams, and inevitably, their unhappy marriages. A great deal of the conflict arises from the fact that both Mamah and Frank are married with children; Mamah and Edwin have two, while Frank and his wife, Catherine, have six. Despite the risk of ruining their reputations, the two begin a secret affair.

What makes the book so interesting, though, is not merely the affair, which is gorgeously reconstructed yet realistically flawed - it is the narration of Mamah Borthwick. Parts of the story are intersected with bits from her diary, much of which has been imagined, due to the sadly small amount of personal writing left after her death, but Mamah's voice feels organic nonetheless. She is fiercely intelligent, witty, and passionate. She is also, at times, painfully self-aware, and her inner turmoil over doing the right thing is as much of a conflict to the story as leaving her marriage is. Mamah isn't a purely selfish woman, throwing away her marriage on a whim - she examines her motives (and Frank's) every step of the way, and often acts on her principles more than her passions. Her affair with Frank leads to a great deal of self-discovery; the novel is much more than a love story.

Mamah and Frank's affair is discovered, but not before each presents the truth to their spouses. In a vein weirdly reminiscent of today's paparazzi-fueled tabloids, the press in Chicago jumps on the scandal and the opportunity to exploit their romance. Frank and Mamah's relationship is constantly under scrutiny, which adds to the stress of the affair, and sometimes threatens the fabric of the relationship itself. In addition to fighting the public opinion of the morality of what they've done, there are fights between the two lovers, too; each has sacrificed something to be with the other, and both question if the sacrifices were well-founded or foolish mistakes.

Loving Frank is first and foremost, a love story, but it is far from ordinary. All of the relationships in the novel, even those between major and minor characters, are given significant depth and complexity - the reader never forgets that Mamah and Frank's affair doesn't exist on some otherworldly plane, but is firmly rooted in reality, and affects nearly everyone the two come in contact with. Also, this story is as much about love as it is about defying convention - in your personal life or in your career - and holding your personal beliefs to a higher standard than the norms society imposes. Finally, Loving Frank is about the happiness one derives from loving oneself as much as the object of ones' affection, and coming to terms with that realization.

6/100: Gentlemen and Players, by Joanne Harris

This wasn't quite bad,
Nor was it quite good.
I laughed at some parts,
Unsure if I should.
The story was lame:
The villain a bore,
And obvious plot "twists"
Abounded galore.
The writing was fine
The hero was fun
The plot, however,
Had me reach for my gun.
Our antagonists'
Motivation was crappy.
It meandered from vicious
To awkward and sappy.
I tried hard to care!
I tried hard to relate!
Alas I'm completely
Unsympathetic to date.
But if you like chess
And murder mys'tries
And books about
Private boys' academies
You might find this book
Thrilling and grand,
Or chilling, suspenseful
An absolute must-have!
Though if you prefer
Plots with substance and pith,
There are far better books
To spend a few hours with.