Books that Make Me Grin

Okay, after an uneventful week (phew) I am returning to the plan. The plan to make you happy! Here's how: read these books. So easy, right? Plus, two of them are series starters, so there are books and books of smiles on the horizon. You're welcome.

I am turning into what might modestly be termed a rabid super-fan of E. Lockhart's novels. It all started with Frankie, but once I knew how ably she grabbed onto the everyman-ness of her teen characters and explored their gorgeous depths, I was hooked. The Boyfriend List is the first in a series about Ruby Oliver, a 15 year old exploring the genesis of her panic attacks with her newly-acquired shrink. It's about boys, and crushes, and friendships, and betrayals, and Popsicles. But it's anything but mundane, because Ruby is stellar. She doesn't know she's stellar, and her shrink doesn't set out to prove she's stellar, and her friends certainly don't end up thinking she's stellar, but we the readers get to know it, and that's the magic and the joy of Lockhart. Plus, footnotes!

Another fun series starts with The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz. The Spellmans are a family of private detectives living in San Francisco, and their bad sheep is our slightly defensive, very snarky, but loving narrator, Izzy. She grew up second-place to her always-perfect brother David, and then her parents had adorable late-in-life baby Rae, putting her in third. Her spate of teenage crimes and romantic disasters are, mostly behind her, but that doesn't stop her parents from putting Rae on the tail of Izzy's new boyfriend. (The Spellmans spend as much time spying on each other as they do on their clients. Surveillance tasks are both a punishment and on-the-job-training.) Izzy wants out from under the phone tap, but when Rae goes missing, nothing will stop her until her sister is found. Izzy's voice has a quick energy that feels effortless, and Lutz puts her through her paces with a great deal of charm and good old-fashioned moxie that is a delight to read.

And now on to side-splitting guffaws. Jenny Lawson, also known as The Bloggess, wrote (and narrated) her "Mostly True Memoir" Let's Pretend This Never Happened, which engendered more laughs per minute than anything I'd read/listened to since the next-to-last David Sedaris. (I didn't really go for his bestiary.) It was problematic, actually, since I listened while commuting. Fortunately I have a hybrid now, so sitting in the car after reaching my destination just to listen to more words from the sound system doesn't destroy so much of the environment. Unfortunately I listened to this mostly with my kids in the car (which will make you question my suitability as a parent. But I skipped the most adult stuff with the 12 year old!), and they got really mad at me if I listened to any of it without them. Basically, Lawson grew up in small-town Texas, with an eccentric-to-say-the-least father and all kinds of odd small-town Texas school situations. But even the not so odd stuff is comedy gold when viewed through Lawson's somewhat skewed perspective. She's a fan of the hyperbole, and extremely good at combining self-deprecation with emotional resonance. I hope there's a next book, and a next, and a next in her.

Nightmares and the Need for Sweet Dreams

One of my goals for this weekend was to write a post about some books that made me smile. Instead, I spent most of it reading books that made me cry. Or maybe, crying anyway, and using books to keep me from focusing too much on the reasons why. Either way, I will have to get you all the smiley stuff later, because the tears took precedence. 

So, my 16 year old was in an accident Friday night. He is uninjured. Everyone is uninjured. The other car is undamaged. His car is totaled. Really, totally totaled.

He'd just left to head into town and I was on my way out to a friend's house for dinner. My phone rang with his special ringtone (Yaz's "Don't Go" because a) I'm that old and b) I don't always like having a son this old) and I was a little put-off, knowing he would be on the freeway and obviously we're not so encouraging of him using his phone while he is driving. He was on the freeway, all right. Standing on the shoulder and saying, "Mom, I had an accident."


He was changing lanes. There was a monster truck in his blind spot - specifically, its big ol tire. Then his car was spinning, and he was slamming head-on into the barrier, and meeting his air bag up close and personal. 


He doesn't remember all the details, except that it seemed to go on for a long time. And then there was the acrid smell, orange flames under the hood, gray smoke in the car.

The truck driver pulled over - he and his passenger were fine, his tire seems to be fine (though it sure left a lot of rubber on D's car door.) They made sure D was fine - he is. Even his violin, which was in the back seat (he was on the way to a performance) was still in tune. The police, tow truck, and fire truck were all on the scene before I managed to babble something semi-coherent and vaguely reassuring to K and get there myself. 


I was relieved to see him standing beside the car when I pulled onto the shoulder myself. The paramedics had already cleared him, and the fire truck pulled away shortly after I arrived. There was almost literally not a scratch on him, but there is a little scrape on his knee. And some skin burn from the airbag, but that faded quickly. Fading not so quickly - my fear reaction, R's fear reaction, D's fear reaction.

The police helped us clear off to a nearby parking lot where the exchange of information and so forth happened, and I got my first good look at what deployed airbags and a crumpled frame looks like. 

Hooray for Honda, I have to say. We got this car new in 2003, and R drove it just a little while before I claimed it, so it was my car, my baby, until January when I got my Honda hybrid & passed it on to D. Kind of rough to see it all destroyed like that, and silly of me to imagine it sacrificing itself to keep D safe, but I can't help feeling it. That car was a dragon protector, and I love it for shielding my baby. 

I still remember one of our first drives in it, when he was 7, sitting in the back seat, his brother's booster seat beside him, and I told him that when he was older it would be his car. He was so proud when it became his - laughing as he cleaned out all my various hair clips and books and whatever and putting his own crap in there.


Now all that crap is in my trunk, where we stashed it after dropping the wreck at the collision center, knowing that we were likely to never see it again. Sight unseen, the insurance agent said it was 99.8% sure to be totaled. If he'd seen it, I think the odds would have been higher. 

After cleaning it out, I drove D downtown for what was left of his performance. Passing the scene of the accident, seeing bits of his tire on the road - it was not easy, for either of us. D's adrenaline high crashed when we talked about his driving again, and among other things he said he thought the time he blew a tire on the way to the DMV was going to be the worst of his teenage boy unfortunate driving experiences. We agreed that this one is more than enough to get him through high school, and hopefully college. 

The next day at 6 am, I put D into a stranger's car for a 4 hour drive into the country (scout thing) and R and I alternately texted him and asked each other if we'd heard from him until he called in the afternoon to check in. The reception was spotty, but hearing him was vital to me. Like us, D was going through a lot of "what-ifs" by then, and since he was the one with the spinning and the smoke and the impact, I imagine it was even worse for him than it was for us. I mean, maybe. Because he knew he was okay, and yes, I also knew he was okay, but did I mention that this boy is my baby? That he is so amazing and vital and essential to my existence, and he had an accident and it could have... It might be worse, the stuff going on in his head. But I think the stuff going on in my head is plenty bad enough.

So Friday night, Saturday night - not a lot of sleep. I stayed up most of Saturday night reading (and crying - lots of cathartic tearful things happening in Robyn Carr's work, I've found.) Once he got home safely on Sunday (and I dosed myself up with some bedtime tea Sunday night) I slept a little better, but still with the nightmares. It's getting better. I cried when talking to D about trying to balance my need to wrap him a cocoon with my logical side's argument that he was going to have to drive again someday soon. I cried when writing to my friends about this. I cried last night watching a tv mom see the wrecker towing her tv daughter's car. I cried just now.

We are insanely lucky that he is okay. He was unhurt. No one else's person or property was hurt. But I am going to keep crying periodically. I am going to have some weird sad scary dreams for a while, and I think D will, too. And R. And K, too. (My sweet empathetic K has been quite the dispenser of giant hugs lately. That boy rules.) I really, really want my family to have sweet dreams again. 

I hope you all have sweet dreams, always. 

Fiction is Fun for Everyone

Three hefty bits of fiction this week, published between 1847 and this year, but I’ll take them in reverse chronological order of their stories.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn – I don’t know what to tell you. Read it. There, done. I mean, I could get into the plot some (woman goes missing on her 5^th anniversary, husband is confounded and suspected, things happen) but really, it all unfolds so grippingly that I wouldn’t want to give a bit of it away in advance. What I will tell you is that Flynn knows her characters inside out, more thoroughly than most any author I can think of, and it is wonderful. And terrifying, because everyone is flawed, Flynn’s characters perhaps more than others. I listened to this book, narrated by Julia Whelan and Kirby Heywood, and you know, normally I listen to books while I do stuff – chores, work, exercise, whatever. But this, I was often enough just sitting, rapt. Or pacing, to better concentrate and absorb and anticipate and fret. Whelan was smooth as butter, which fit the character to a tee, and Heywood, oh - there was such a landscape in his narration. This was my second Flynn novel, and I found after the previous (Sharp Objects) that I needed a little recovery time before starting this, but I am unable to stay away from her. Her writing has become a serious, dangerous addiction.

My little palate cleanser after Gone Girl was Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, which I hadn’t read since high school. I had the mistaken impression that I didn’t really care for it, that it was too gothic and silly and melodramatic for me. Well, maybe it had been, at one point (there is a madwoman in the attic, after all), but that would have been when I was stupid. Now that I’m smart, I love it. “Reader, I forgave him….” Oh, I was in tears. (Okay, I cry all the dang time at books. One of these days I’ll be crying over something in real life, and my family will just not blink, because they’ll assume my head is, again, as always, in a book or a movie. But these tears were realer than the rest! They were Velveteen Rabbit tears!) Anyway, I had forgotten large swathes of this novel – all of her school years, much of what brought Jane and Mr. Rochester together to start with, the annoying neighbors. (Mad women in attics and a little bit of transcendental communication will knock other details right out of the mind.) And I don’t think I’d ever noticed just how awesome a female Jane Eyre is. She’s far more the arbiter of her own fate than I’d realized, and I delighted in getting to know her strength and intelligence and morality. And the humor between her and Rochester! Such fun. I’m very glad I gave this another chance. (Now, will I do the same for Wuthering Heights? Reader, stay tuned!)

Madeline Miller’s debut, The Song of Achilles, is more a fleshing out of the lives of Achilles and Patroclus than a retelling of the Iliad, though of course the Trojan War comprises a great deal of the novel. We meet Patroclus, the narrator, when he is five and first encounters the depth of his father’s disapproval of him and the height of golden potential that is the five-year-old Achilles. Patroclus spends a few dismal years disappointing his kingly father before being disowned and sent off to foster with Achilles’s father, King Peleus. It takes time for the resentful and jealous boy to make peace with the glory that is Achilles, but soon they are intimate friends. The sea goddess Thetis is Achilles’s mother, and she is not best pleased that her son has taken an ugly mortal as his boon companion. The whole ‘mom’s disapproval of teenage son’s friendships only brings them closer’ thing is clearly at play here, and Achilles will not be separated, even when Thetis sends him off to be educated by the centaur Chiron. It turns into a golden idyll for the young men, and the exploration of their physical love for each other. Then Helen is kidnapped, and Greece goes to war against Troy. Fate sends Achilles to battle, to wrestle with his destiny and prophesized death, and Patroclus remains at his side. What I loved about this book – the reverting of Achilles from legendary warrior to sweet kid, the view of him through the eyes of a loving friend who doesn’t love war, the easy prose. My husband (who teaches the Iliad) snorted at the ‘they were lovers’ angle, but for us modern mortals who don’t ‘get’ godly motivations as well as the ancients did, adding the upset and jealous mom to Thetis’s relationship with both men was interesting, and effective. Note to self: approve of my kid’s romantic choices, or risk his rebellion.

Wisdom (Teeth) Out of the Mouths of Babes

My baby (yes, he's 16 & almost a foot taller than me - doesn't matter) had his wisdom teeth out this week. Picture this:

Where - Maxillofacial Surgery Post-Op Recovery Room (a grey cubby sort of room, with disconcertingly placed windows and just enough room for a padded bench and a stacking chair.)

When - 20 minutes after his jaw operation

Who - Concerned Loving Mother and Groggy Anesthetized Son 

What?

Well, that was the question. WHAT was the boy trying to say to me, with his combination of vowel sounds and gestures? I mean, we can't blame him for his inarticulateness. He's still numb, and he has the bandages. Just look at him. (Poor baby!) But he is persistent. He has a message, and he WILL convey it. That is, he will if he can get me to grasp his meaning. 

D comes up with the universal gesture for 'writing stuff down' so i hand over pen and paper. It probably seemed like a great idea to him, but, well. Recumbent and drugged out handwriting isn't exactly his forte. I get him to rewrite it a few times, while trying to get it through his fuzzy head that I understand the "I just want to say" part. It's the rest I can't figure out. (He wants to say... oh, thank you. To me, I ask? No. To - arm circling gesture. The universe, you mean? Oh, right, just everyone here. You just want to say thank you to everyone at the Maxillofacial Surgery Center. Okay, good. But wait, there's more! He wants to say thank you - yes, we have that part - and it was... wait, has he gone back to sleep? Oh, no, he means dream. It was like a dream. So what he wrote there is, "I want to say thank you and it was like a dream." Yes. Obviously.

I pass the message along to the nurses and the surgeon. (D is so polite! He can barely grasp that I'm being given post-op instructions, but when the surgeon stands to leave, D reaches up for a handshake. Someone should praise whoever taught that boy manners.)

So now we have another 20 minutes or so to wait before he's alert enough to go home. D mentions that he'd been dreaming of The Beatles and some other stuff (the Beatles medley over the stereo competed with the Olympics on the t.v. and the very chatty old guy in the corner for most prominent sound in the waiting room.) He repeats himself about the dreaming, the thanks, the fact that his chin is numb. He tries to write more, but can't control the pen well, so he resorts to charades.

D: (holds up 3 fingers.)
Me: Three words
D: (thumbs up. holds up 1 finger.)
Me: First word.
D: (shakes head. holds up 3 fingers.)
Me: Three words.
D: (holds up 3 fingers again.)
Me: Third word.
D: (thumbs up. points to me.)
Me: Me?
D: (thumbs up. holds up 2 fingers.)
Me: Second word.
D: (nods. reaches up a finger and air-draws a big letter...)
Me: P?
     (Does he need to pee? Do I?)
D: (shakes head. draws the letter again.)
Me: R? Oh, are! Okay, something are me... are you.
D: (nods, holds up 1 finger.)
Me: First word. We got this.
D: (points at head)
Me: Ice pack? Head? Jaw?
D: (rolls eyes. taps head again.)
Me: Does it hurt?
D: (rolls eyes harder. leans forward and tugs on my hair.)
Me: Hair? Hair are me?
D: (frustrated grunt. leans forward and tugs on my hair, then taps my chair.)
Me: Oh, rhymes with hair and chair! Okay, where? Where are you? Where am I? I'm right here, we're at the oral surgeon's office.
     (Wow, he's still pretty confused. I thought he'd be more with it by now. Should I alert the staff?)
D: (frustrated grunt. points to hair, chair, his head, exaggeratedly hums) ooounn iiii....
Me: Sounds like...
D: (thumbs up plus eye roll. holds up 1 finger, taps head where his ear would be if I could see his ear beneath the thing holding on his ice packs.)
Me: First word, sounds like.
D: Ooooooo

Me: Sounds like moo!
D: (thumbs up.)
Me: Moo are you. Who are you? D, I'm your mom.
     (Oh, that's scary. He really ought to know his mommy, right? Where is that nurse??)
D: (biggest eye roll yet, negating hand waves. repeat of ear tap) Oooo, oow!
Me: Moo, moo cow?
D: (nodding) ow! (taps ear area) oow
Me: First word is how?
D: (thumbs up.)
Me: How are you?
D: (nods)
Me: Um... I'm fine. Thanks. Thank you, sweetie, I'm doing just fine.
     (Now that I know you know who I am, and where we are, and also that you think 'moo' and 'how' rhyme and that I get to enjoy that fact forever.)

Romance! (AKA, Not Kid Stuff)

So you should know I read (or listen to) a lot of romance novels. While it was a little embarrassing for my 16 year old to comment on the book cover icons on my Kindle (he tends towards sarcasm) (it's innate, more to do with his parentage than his age), I don't generally mind this being a known fact about Mel. I do, however, refuse to read THAT book, the one (well, three - it's a trilogy) everyone talks about, because too many people in the book world / romance readership world that I respect just didn't like it at all. The clunky writing, the inept metaphorical language, the fact that, in general, Powerful Bajillionaire with Surprising Amounts of Free Time Falls for Unassuming Nice Girl Who Will Change His Life is just not my storyline of choice - it all keeps me from touching the thing. I do want to point you all to this helpful list of other books (better books) for recent romance converts to check out. I've read Lisa Kleypas, Lorelei James, Linda Howard, and Maya Banks titles and think they're all authors worth checking out, so I presume the others from this article would be, too.

Elsewhere in the world of romance novels, the Romance Writers of America annual conference just wrapped up, and winners of the RITA Awards for excellence in the romance genre were announced. A few of the winners are books I've been meaning to blog about anyway, because I just really enjoyed them. These are all a little outside my normal romance reading (which tends towards Regency historicals and straightforward contemporaries) but I'm glad I checked them out. (Here's a list of the RITA winners at the Smart Bitches Trashy Books site, which is a great place to go to check out romance reviews and recommendations. Also, I raved about Joanna Bourne's The Black Hawk a while ago, and look, it won!)

Anyway.

I heard a ton about Dragon Bound by Thea Harrison (RITA winner for best paranormal romance), but it was, you know, about a dragon? And other mythical creatures? Interacting with humans in modern-day America? So, sure, it was supposed to be super well written, and funny, and hot, but paranormal isn't my go-to choice, so I ignored everyone's advice. For a while. Then I was scrolling through options, and it was one, and I figured I may as well check it out, and wow. It's just great. I am a total dragon convert. Harrison probably doesn't write effortlessly, even though the final product makes it seem that way, but she definitely writes with tons of attention to the task at hand and a firm grasp of story and character. I've since gone and read the rest of the novels in the series (so far). This one is my  favorite, but they're each quite good. (And hot. Dragons. Yum. Who knew?)

While in paranormal land, I got the audiobook of First Grave on the Right by Darynda Jones (RITA winner for best first book), which was read by Lorelei King. Fewer mythical beasts in this one, but the narrator, Charley Davidson, is the grim reaper. She sees dead people. It helps a lot when she's helping her cop uncle invesitage homicides, since she can interview the victims and all, but it's not too handy when her shower time is interrupted by the recently departed in search of a portal to the afterlife. Plus there's the complication of the big dark shadowy (sexy) figure visiting her in her dreams, and maybe, sometimes, not in her dreams. This is a fast-paced, fun, cleverly built book, more adventure than romance, and I'd probably have drawn a Stephanie Plum/Janet Evanovich comparison even if King (who narrates the Plum audiobooks) hadn't been the voice of Charley in my head. (King does excel with snarky humor and I give her props for being able to differentiate the internal and external dialogue so well when the text doesn't do it.) I've listened to the second in the series and definitely look forward to the third.

So, back to the Bajillionaire Man and the Woman Who Changes Him. Doukakis's Apprentice by Sarah Morgan (RITA winner for best contemporary series romance) is the kind of thing I normally avoid even more than the paranormals. The Greek tycoon who wears power as well as he wears his bespoke suits, who only cares about the next deal, and about getting revenge for some familial wrong. The feisty and smart but not necessarily educated woman who will fight for her point of view and become a thorn in his side. The transformation of the thorn and the tycoon into lovers, despite themselves. This has it all. Damon has taken over Polly's family business, an act of revenge prompted by Damon's little sister eloping with Polly's dad. Polly has been running the business, and has to fight to keep her little workplace-family intact despite their new corporate cubicle headquarters. Damon refuses to see that Polly is the heart of the company, much less that she's not really to blame for her dad's philandering. It's not a secret formula, this formula - you know they'll find love and respect for each other, despite the odds. But Morgan writes smoothly and with charm, giving personality to the characters that transcends their tropes.

Kid Stuff (But Awesome for Adults, Too)

I've listened to some super-good YA books this year. And I have outside proof that the books I'm going to write about are great ones - they all made it onto the "Best-Ever Teen Novels" 100 title short-list that NPR Books came up with this month. So, obviously I'm brilliant, and also you should read these books.

Start with The Fault in our Stars by John Green (which I listened to on audio, read by Kate Rudd. Although it's a great audio - I'm always a fan of Rudd's proficiency with teen voices - the book has some major tear-fest moments, which is mighty inconvenient while driving or trying to get my job done or whatever.) Anyway, TFIOS is a gorgeous, emotion-packed, wry, deep, fun book. About kids with cancer. Our narrator, Hazel, is a terminal teen, which, okay, isn't really a laugh-riot. But she's also just a teen, and a pretty engaging one. Smart and funny and, of course, sarcastic (as all the best teens are.) (Note to my teens: I love your sarcasm. Guess whether or not I am being straightforward.) Anyway, there's a boy - the beautiful Augustus - and books and video games and a Cancer Kids Support Group and hospitals and tulips and, all in all, I want to insist you read it without totally giving away the plot. Lots of people insisted I read it before I got around to it, and I now formally apologize to all of them for taking too long.

So when you've dried your eyes, move on to The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart. Frankie is another bright teen, and her intelligence lands her in some serious hot water when she uses it for nefarious purposes. As a student at the formerly all-male prep school that her father attended, she led a fairly shadowy existence until she decides that the still all-male secret society her dad belonged to ought to be infiltrated. Specifically, by her. She can't break into the ranks, but she does manage to wrest control of their actions, directing an escalating series of campus pranks that - well, these things never end up quite textbook. The novel is her detailed confession after things go wrong, and Frankie's voice has tons of wit, brash charm, and more than a smidgen of social commentary. Tanya Eby's narration of the Frankie's journey into herself is fun, smart, and perfectly gauged to the text. I keep pushing this book on people, and so far no one has pushed me back, so I think I can safely say that you, too, will adore reading it.

Not yet sick of exceptionally smart teen girls? Good. Because Robin Wasserman's The Book of Blood and Shadow is next on my list for you. This is a quest, complete with academic puzzles, strange prophetic Eastern Europeans, and murdered friends. Nora and her best friends and her perfect new boyfriend have a lovely time translating ancient letters and manuscripts for a Latin professor, until the professor is the first in a string of murders that sets her on a journey to Prague, beset by secret societies (I do love a secret society) and chased by police. The worlds here are exquisitely drawn, and Wasserman draws you so deeply and steadily into her web that you are captivated before you realize it. Narrator Emily Janice Card's voice is fluid and graceful, despite the plethora of languages in the book, and her pacing and tone during the many tense scenes is, frankly, just a little too chilling at times.

And before we leave Prague, let's settle in with Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke and Bone, audiobook read by Khristine Hvam. Did I mention that this is another book about a teenage girl who doesn't quite fit into her world and finds herself on a quest full of danger and self-discovery? This girl is Karou, who, as it turns out, maybe isn't all that human, despite her almost-normal student life in Prague. Her blue hair, inability to tell lies, access to wish-granting charms, and the fact that she was raised by a demon who frequently sends her through doors in his shop into other cities so she can collect teeth for him all point to a certain otherness about her. But she doesn't know who - or what - she is, and when those doors from her demon families' domain all start bearing the same black-handed mark, she has more questions than ever. Hvam's bright, edgy voice mirrors Karou's emotions and adds depth to Hvam's multi-faceted, imaginative, fascinating world. This is one of those audiobooks that kept me up nights listening, and I am eagerly awaiting the second book in the series, out in November. Read this, so you can tap your foot impatiently along with me, won't you?

Fun, Smart, Tricky, Subversive Books for Everyone

You may have noticed, what with the Sayers, Bowen, Winspear, Christie, Tey, and Upson titles I'm always reading, that you can hand me a cast of English people in the early-to-mid 1900s and I'll happily disappear into their stories. Is there anything better than a country house with mysterious goings on? Yeah, I didn't think so. Which is why I grinned so much as I began Sadie Jones's The Uninvited Guests. The country house is of the crumbling variety, the inhabitants (mother, step-father, two children just coming into adulthood and one left to navigate childhood on her own) are individualistic and odd, and it is clear that Emerald's 20th birthday party will not go off without a hitch. Or two. Or a couple of dozen, in the form of refugees from a nearby railway accident, including one with a mysterious connection to the family. You're grinning, too, right? You want to know more? I won't tell you more, because that would spoil it, so go read it for yourself.

Another grin-getter? (Not a word, I know, but I am coining a phrase here, all right?) The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt. In addition to having the best cover ever (though the paperback isn't so brilliant), it packs a serious punch. Like Jones, deWitt is taking a known genre (outlaw Westerns) and tickling it to fit his fancy. The brothers, Eli and Charlie Sisters, are gunslingers sent from Oregon to California in search of the man they've been hired to kill. Along the way they encounter witches, bears, whores, panhandlers, dentists, and inventors. I listened to the audio, read by John Pruden, and through him Eli's narration hits every note of comedy and pathos, while remaining as understated and almost naive as deWitt drew him. I'm left with a deep well of affection for Eli, and a lot of admiration for deWitt's subversive skills.

And speaking of subversive, check out Adam Johnson's The Orphan Master's Son. Unless you're going to North Korea anytime soon (you're not, are you?), in which case you should definitely not pack this. But why go, when you can just inhabit the world Johnson creates - with a massive amount of research and imagination combined, I assume. The orphan in question, Pak Jun Do (or 'John Doe' to American ears), has one of those Forrest Gump-like careers, taking him from the orphanage's work details to kidnapping duty along Japan's beaches, from tunnels under the North-South Korean borders to Texas, of all places. And everywhere he goes, he is surrounded by the influence of the "Dear Leader." Jun Do is immensely likable and very much the kind of character you want to root for, despite all the odds against him. Johnson is quite a deft writer - closely observant, incisive, wry, and emotionally intelligent. I was particularly impressed with the fact that none of his characters were caricatures, which I almost expected given the setting. But even the Dear Leader has depth and humanity. I also loved how immediately I felt at home in Jun Do's world. Narrator Tim Kang kept the whole production rolling smoothly along, and somehow gave Jun Do the strong core of inner silence that carried the character through so many strange and often horrible experiences.

You guys, I loved these books. The last two, especially, rank super-high in my 'best of' list for the year so far. Check them out and let me know if you disagree. (You won't disagree.)