In Hillary Jordan’s 2011 novel When She Woke, the author brilliantly conceives of a desperate set of circumstances that feel perfectly distant-yet-familiar.  Unfortunately, her execution of the story falls just shy of the setup’s promise.  The book begins in a prison cell in a near-future Texas.  Our protagonist, Hannah, has been convicted of having an abortion – a procedure that was criminalized by a religiously conservative government after a virulent disease left many women infertile.  As part of her punishment, she is infected with a virus that changes the color of her skin to red, signifying murder (and a nod to the Scarlet Letter).  This procedure, called Chroming, is used to relieve prison overcrowding after the bubble burst on the nation’s for-profit prison industry.  The severity of a crime dictates the color of a parolee’s skin, and justice is rendered in all shades of Skittle.

Without giving too much away, I’ll say that the first third of the book is a real page turner.  Hannah accepts her new pariah status with a steely resolve that readies the reader for an exceptionally strong protagonist.  Her pregnancy was the result of an affair with a very influential, and very married, man of the cloth.  Her own sartorial passion for cloth, as a seamstress, is a plot point built-up with a sensual intrigue greater than the actual affair.  But then nothing exceptional happens with either of those two loves.  What once felt like a desirous character bound for great insight, eventually is revealed to be naive young woman who is a tad boring.  Which is a shame, because the Margaret Atwood-esque world Hannah inhabits is beyond fascinating.

Of course, there are potentially more dangerous and ethically troubling consequences to genetic engineering.  Just before happening on the Times article, I read Margaret Atwood’s 2003 speculative fiction novel Oryx and Crake.  The book (named after two creatures that have had their own run-ins with extinction) imagines a dystopian near-future where genetic manipulation is the next – and potentially final – bubble industry.  Animals are being spliced together, virulent strains of disease are hybridized and weaponized, and humanoid beings are artificially constructed, all in ways that feel like a fiction that we are on the precipice of making reality.

The story begins at the end, after it all has already fallen apart.  Snowman is our bizarrely-named protagonist and through his flashbacks we witness a world run by corporations resolute in their push to topple the boundaries of nature in order to secure new products and dominate world markets.  The research and development of the new products – say, human organs grown in pigs, or headless, plantlike chickens that will perennially regrow breasts– is cutthroat, with murder being a legitimate business practice.  Employees of the corporations live comfortably, in guarded compounds separate from the clamoring, unwashed masses.  The city dwellers, or “Plebeians” as they’re called derisively, live in an environment rife with disease and vice, the population being useful to those in the compounds only as consumers and occasional sex objects.

Like most dystopian novels, Oryx and Crake reads as a warning about unchecked human ambition and our disregard for the natural order.  It brings to the fore grave concerns about our society’s ability to manage the entanglement of science and industry. With that said, I still think we should go full speed ahead on the fuzzy elephant thing.

Of course, once I started reading, I couldn’t put the beflowered thing down.  The story takes place in a remote area of 19th century China.  It follows the lives of two sworn sisters, or laotong, over the course of their lives – from humble girlhoods through the trials of marriage, family, and invading horde.  In traditional Chinese culture, a laotong relationship was the epitome of BFFs – a formalized friendship that was expected to be more emotionally intimate than any other in the women’s lives.  Together they practiced nu shu, an ancient form of women’s writing, which they used to exchange correspondence and to chronicle their laotong relationship on the folds of a paper fan.

Through the lives of the sworn sisters, the book examines the various degradations women were subjected to in that time and place.  From birth they were considered a burden, whose only value was in service to the family and their ability to create sons.  To make girls marriageable, their feet were bound in a long, gruesome process – which left them essentially housebound for the rest of their lives.  I think that process best illustrates how dainty this book turned out to be: “By nightfall the eight toes that needed to break had broken, but I was still made to walk.  I felt my broken toes under the weight of every step I took, for they were loose in my shoes.  The freshly created space where once there had been a joint was now a gelatinous infinity of torture.”  Eesh.

So, while there was ample discussion of things like embroidery in the book (which was actually fascinating), there was also a healthy number of pages that were full-on gruesome.  Something for everyone.

If your book club would be interested in this title, or any of our Book Club in a Bag sets, simply submit an online reservation form.  We currently have over 80 Book Club in a Bag sets, each containing 10-12 copies of the book and a discussion guide, and they checkout for 8 weeks. – Ransom Jabara, Reference

So instead of deriding hipsters, I’m going to begrudgingly admit to some hipster tendencies (I’m too old and my pants too comfortable to fully embrace the lifestyle) – and say that I really enjoyed a number of books on the flow chart.  Actually, one of my all-time favorite books made the cut -  Sam Lipsyte’s The Ask.  That book is desperately bitter and totally hilarious – and is apparently as dated as I am – so I won’t go too far into it.

Another title on the list, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, is one I just recently finished.   It’s memoir in the medium of graphic novel (how hip is that?) and it chronicles Bechdel’s time growing-up in a funeral home.  The primary focus of the story is her relationship with her angry, repressed father.  He was a man who hid behind a meticulous facade but failed to conceal his inner turmoil – or his desire for young men.  Alison (also gay – famously so, in fact) has to come to terms with her father’s sexuality while still learning to navigate her own – the drama of which culminates in a life-changing family tragedy (Fun, right?).  Bechdel’s writing is wry and just borders on pretentious, which makes Fun Home a perfect addition to the hipster canon.  So hop on your rickety vintage bike and come check it out. – Ransom Jabara, Reference

Granted, Simon Rich (son of longtime New York Times columnist Frank Rich) doesn’t carry the same familial capital of, say, Chet Haze (aka Chester Hanks) – but that’s still no excuse. The highlights of Simon Rich’s superfluous career include: being the President of the Harvard Lampoon, he was dubbed a “wunderkind” as Saturday Night Live’s youngest-ever staff writer, and then he went on to pen four pretty hilarious books.  What a showboat.

The first of those books, Ant Farm (2007), is a Thurber-prize nominated collection of short essays that explore awkward youth and making sense of life’s small injustices. Here’s an excerpt from the essay “What Goes Through My Mind When I’m Home Alone (From My Mom’s Perspective)”:

Hmm, Mom left me home alone. Better go through the medicine cabinet and drink all the medicine for no reason. Wait, what’s this? A note telling me not to “drink any medicines”? Thank God! I was about to do that…

Well, better throw things out the window, something I haven’t done since I was seven. I’m fifteen years old, but I haven’t matured at all. I still need to be reminded constantly about how to get through the day. What? A note? Guess I shouldn’t “throw objects out the window” after all. There go my big plans.

Now at 28, a more mature Rich has released a new novel titled What in God’s Name. In it he imagines what heaven might be like if it were run as a corporation. God is portrayed as a charismatic, but oblivious, CEO who views humanity as a product line that’s just about run its course. To save the world, a well-intentioned Angel bets God that he can make a love connection between two lonely New Yorkers that both suffer from a tragic dearth of mojo – and, of course, hilarity ensues… unnecessarily. - Ransom Jabara, Reference

But that’s not the point.  The point is Chris Hayes has written a book titled Twilight of the Elites: America after Meritocracy.  In it he examines the ideal of the American meritocratic system:  that the most talented among us, regardless of race, class, gender, etc., can become wildly successful in America if we put forth enough effort (a notion typified by the ascendance of individuals like Barak Obama, Lloyd Blankfein,and Condoleezza Rice).  Hayes argues that we have strayed far from that ideal because the current class of elites has pulled the social ladder up behind them – making the notion of merit inherently skewed because the playing field is now so scandalously unlevel.

As a prime example, Hayes (in a subtle backdoor-brag) opens with a description of the top-ranked public high school he attended in New York City.  When he was there, the student body wasn’t exactly representative of the racial and economic makeup of the city, but it was a  far closer approximation than what can be found today.  Then black and Latino students comprised about 20 % of the student population, but today it is down to 4% (NYC is more than 50% black and Latino).  Admission was, and is, based solely on the results of a standardized test, i.e. meritocratic – so what’s with the change?  The difference, Hayes asserts, is that elite parents are pouring millions of dollars into the burgeoning test prep industry, effectively collapsing the notion of merit-based admission.  Since attending this high school essentially assures entrance into a top college, which then almost always equates to a  comfortable, elite future – one can see how the system might be viewed as unfairly self-perpetuating.

Much of the rest of the book details the failures of elite institutions (Congress, Major League Baseball, the Catholic Church) and their unwillingness to take responsibility for their actions.  Many of the topics he discusses are contentious, particularly in this politically charged era.  But if nothing else, an interesting notion to be considered in Hayes’s work is that the country’s divisions aren’t really between right and left, as we are often led to believe, rather the real division is between the top and and everyone else.  – Ransom Jabara, Reference

And take heart; there are those who have written in our defense.  I was recently introduced to a decade old polemic against the snootiness of literary fiction called A Reader’s Manifesto by B.R. Myers.  The book takes to task writers and reviewers who ignore storytelling in favor of pretentious sentence crafting.  Myers uses examples lifted from the pages of many of the literary elite circa 2002 (Annie Proulx, Don Delillo, Cormac McCarthy – heavyweights still) and levels some pretty unforgiving criticism, which is still largely applicable.  Even if you love the book he is gutting, the examples provided are so spot-on that they’re tough to disregard.  Here is a condensed version of his argument, which appeared as an essay in The Atlantic.

Now, I don’t think his point was that we should shy away from challenging fiction.  He offers many examples of “highbrow” work that is direct and engaging.  But I do think he would suggest that some authors should expend less time impressing themselves -  because their writing can be burdensome to readers.

Have some examples?  Feel free to put them in the comments.  – Ransom Jabara, Reference

But apparently those limits don’t apply to Augusten Burroughs, who has written a new book guiding us through some of life’s most consequential situations. In This is How: proven aid in overcoming shyness, molestation, fatness, spinsterhood, grief, disease, lushery, decrepitude & more– for young and old alike, Burroughs tackles touchy subjects with sage-sounding prescriptions that are in no way substantiated through science, expert testimony, or convincing anecdotal evidence.  Which would be forgivable if the book were as tongue-in-cheek as the longwinded title suggests, but Burroughs is earnest to a fault.

That’s not to say his book isn’t interesting or well-written.  If you’re a fan of his previous works (Dry, Running with Scissors), you know that he learned many of life’s lessons through the school of hard knocks – and him meditating on those hard-won truths, what’s saved him, is actually fascinating.  But the book is self-reflection awkwardly packaged as advice.   It reads as if he was trying (and failing) to not write another autobiographical work.

So let me try my hand at some advice:  if you have the stomach for profundities like – “Seeing the truth means looking at everything for the first time, every time.” – then this book should prove to be thought-provoking and inspirational, if not entirely useful.  – Ransom, Reference

I tend to remember Michael Ian Black as Johnny Bluejeans from Comedy Central’s short-lived faux European variety show Viva Variety.  But most people probably know him best as one of the talking heads from VH1’s I Love the [Decade].  He was also in the amazing cult classic Wet Hot American Summer and has done some well-regarded work with the comedy troupes Stella and The State (not to mention a slew of random commercials and hastily cancelled series – so you’ve definitely seen him around).

To top off his already impressive body of work as an actor/comedian, he has become a fairly prolific writer.  Over the past few years, he has published six books, including three nonfiction titles and three children’s picture books (one of the kid’s books, Chicken Cheeks, is particularly cute – it’s just a long list of names for animal hineys).   This month M.I.B. released a book he co-authored (inexplicably) with Meghan McCain.  It is elegantly titled: America You Sexy B****: A Love Letter to Freedom.  The premise is the two of them travel cross-country in an RV (the old odd-couple-in-a-confined-space bit) in an attempt to sort out the political divisiveness afflicting our nation.  I have my doubts that it worked.

Earlier this year, Black released a book of personal essays titled You’re Not Doing It Right:  Tales of Marriage, Sex, Death, and Other Humiliations.  Just as the title suggests, it’s him musing on a broad swath of life’s big events.  The essays are certainly funny, but I was also impressed with his thoughtfulness as a writer.  I’ll leave you with a few of his sharp observations and maybe you’ll decide to get to know him better:

On attending his father’s funeral as a child:  “Inside, the place suffocates from wood and carpet.  A long hallway bisects the building leading to several viewing rooms, which, I think, is also what they call them in adult video stores.”

On the difficulty of marriage:  “It cannot be a coincidence that the word we most often use to describe marriage, institution, is also the word we use for the place we put crazy people.”

On the power of marketers:  “They know us because their only mission in life is to satisfy these deep American cravings that resonate across the vastness of our culture like whale songs.  They are the people who create the itch and scratch of American life.”

Ransom – Reference

Well, the line has moved.  A Game of Thrones is outstanding, both the book and the HBO series.  I find myself caring deeply about the goings-on in the lands of Westeros.  I worry about the Starks of Winterfell and their noble, yet naïve, approach to governance.  I’m fascinated by the dragon-lovin’ exiled princess Daenerys “Stormborn” Targaryen, and her development into a fiery young queen.  And boy-howdy do I detest those treacherous, incestuous, richy-rich Lannisters (with the big exception of Tyrion, the imp, whose small stature camouflages enormous potential as a statesman).

A Game of Thrones is the first book in George R.R. Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire” series.  It’s something like 700 pages long, so I’m going to give you a piece of advice – if you have watched the show, or intend on doing so, skip the first book.  The show stays very true to the text.  Even much of the show’s dialogue is lifted directly from the book’s pages.

Am I encouraging you to eschew a book in favor of TV?  Technically, yes.  But just to free up your time to read something else.  Like Tyrion says, “a mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone.”  I’m an embarrassment.  -Ransom, Reference