The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

written by Bill Bryson

I picked up this book because I thought I loved Bill Bryson. Certainly I did love A Walk in the Woods and have also enjoyed portions of A Short History of Nearly Everything and some of his travel writings. He's famous for his ability to capture the humor and idiocy of the places and people he visits, and Thunderbolt makes this evident - only this time it's not a travelogue of a physical journey, but a journey of his growing-up years.

But his writing, to me, falls short this time. It's funny but not funny. Part of it's a generational thing; I think people of Bryson's generation (who grew up in the fifties and sixties) might get more out of this book than I did. Some of the story line just felt plainly uninteresting, since the events of the time didn't hold personal relevance for me. And although the typical Bryson humor is there, I grew weary of his overused hyperbole. Sometimes it just felt like he was trying way too hard to be funny. Some of the humor was even annoying or offensive, like the frequent cutting references to the "fat kids" he grew up with, or the parts about constantly trying to persuade his classmate Mary O'Leary to disrobe.

After reading other Bryson stuff, this book felt like a disappointment. Like a quick, thrown-together patchwork of some of his childhood memories, with no real point to the story. If he hadn't already made a name for himself with his previous work, I don't think this book would be that big of a seller.

How to Be Lost

written by Amanda Eyre Ward

This is perhaps the first time since high school that I've read an entire novel in under 24 hours. But I guess anyone could pull that off if trapped on a tour bus for most of a day. I brought this book along on the one-day Grand Canyon excursion that Janet and I signed up for while we were in Las Vegas for a few days. (The heck with Girls' Night Out — how about a Girls' Weekend Out!) Since the drive time between Vegas and the Grand Canyon is a staggering 4.5 hours across a barren desert, this book is what prevented me from going catatonic while listening to the torturously bad jokes of the tour bus driver.

I'd first heard of this novel from Cindy, who read it during our backpacking trip through Great Smoky Mountain National Park last spring. I remember her being both engrossed in this book and shocked by some of its twists. It sounded to me like a good "chick" book.

It's about a girl named Caroline Winters whose younger sister Ellie vanishes at age 5. The family basically falls apart in the ensuing years. Much later, when Caroline's an adult, her mother shows her a page out of a magazine, and in the background is a woman who the mom thinks is the missing sister. Caroline ends up going on a quest to Montana to find the woman.

Of note:

• The style of this book is very Jodi-Picoult-ish, which Janet and I decided is a pretty common theme lately in new novels. You get a fairly close and disturbing look at a dysfunctional family with many layers of problems, and there's not a necessarily tidy ending. You also get to see things from multiple people's perspectives, which I always find kind of cool.
• There are some wandering side plots that go nowhere. (The following might be a spoiler if you plan to read this book.) A major example is when Caroline finds the woman she thinks is Ellie but it ends up being someone who just looks a little like Ellie. The mistaken identity becomes obvious to the reader pretty early on, yet the story lingers way too long on this. Other annoying tangents that take up too much of the reader's time include the premature birth of Caroline's niece, her (other) sister's rocky marriage, and the sudden death of Caroline's mother.
• The ending was abrupt and lame. Definitely a lot of unfinished business and loose ends. I got the feeling that the author's publishing deadline was looming or something, and she just stopped writing.
• I loved the character of Agnes Fowler and the way the author revealed her personality through letters. I'm a bit embarrassed to say that Agnes reminds me a little of myself. Trusting, naive, very un-savvy in many ways, yet fairly competent in other ways. For the record, though, I must clarify here that, unlike Agnes, I have never visited a website called AlaskaHunks.com.

Reading Lolita in Tehran

written by Azar Nafisi

My friend and stepsister Terry gave me this book. Back in January we endured a very long day together at St. Joe's hospital as we waited for the ER doctors to figure out what to do with my very ill, very frail stepmother. (Which, believe me, is another story for another blog altogether.) As a diversion, we began chatting about what we'd been reading lately, and Terry found out that I had this book on my must-read list because I'd heard good things about it from Jay's mom. She promptly ran out to Borders and bought it for me.

It's a compelling true story about Azar Nafisi, an Iranian professor of literature, who weathers a turbulent and socially repressive period of political upheaval in Iran. Sadly, she quits her job at a university in Tehran due to the rampant Islamic authoritarianism and the rigid restrictions placed upon women. As a means of promoting and affirming the right to independent thought, she assembles a small group of women who believe in the power of literature, and conducts a makeshift class once a week in her home. The book is a memoir of those difficult years, told through a discussion of the novels they read together.

So the book is really a combination of literary criticism and poignant memoir. Woven throughout is Nafisi's political commentary about the transformation of Iran from a vibrant, progressive nation to one where much of the population is manipulated through repression and intimidation. It's a sad, disturbing glimpse into a society that attributes very little value to women.

Of Note:

• Overall, I felt very uneducated as I read this book, mainly on two levels: (1) I know very little about the political and religious history of Iran, and this book places you smack dab in the middle of the Iranian revolution. (2) I used to think I knew something of great literature, but after reading this book I realize I know next to nothing. Of the many novels that the author weaves into her memoir, I recognized the titles of maybe two in ten. Maybe.


• The one big take-away that I LOVED in this book is the message that literature, even if it portrays immoral people or bad behavior, does not in itself corrupt the reader. The Islamic regime in Iran wanted to prohibit citizens from reading such controversial stories as Pride and Prejudice and Lolita because the assumption was that if you read that stuff, you become just like the main characters (i.e., you read about sin, you become sinful). Interesting that some ultra-conservative Christians would say the same thing! I'm not saying that I necessarily recommend or embrace the particular novels Nafisi mentions, but I do believe that reading literature can only open our eyes and our minds, helping us to contemplate issues of truth and justice in a way that allows us to see for ourselves what is right.


• She makes reference several times to "her magician" -- a man who was a champion of free thought but who had intentionally withdrawn from the educational and social system in Iran. He is her sometimes-friend, sometimes-counselor, sometimes-colleague. I found it weird that she portrayed him as some kind of mysterious, Yoda-like being. He was underdeveloped and too murky of a character for me to understand or connect with.


• I found it interesting that there was not a lot of Persian pride, language, or culture woven into the story. Have you noticed that some stories that take place in non-English-speaking locales are filled with the language and imagery of the protagonists' ethnicity? Not this one. In fact, I would even say that the author goes to some length to show that she and her proteges think and act very much like the typical Western citizen, except that they live under a restrictive totalitarian regime. There are very few references to Persian foods (she does mention eating Western goodies, though, such as sandwiches and ice cream) and very few instances where she uses Persian epithets or Persian words. Rather than drawing attention to the uniqueness of Iranian culture, it feels to me like she instead draws attention to the fact that Iranian people, if left unrepressed, would be essentially the same as American people. I'm not saying this is a bad or incorrect view; just notable different than the style of many other foreign authors.


• The story meanders; there's no nice way of saying it. There were several points where she lost me with her long and complicated dissections of literature such as The Great Gatsby, Lolita, and Jane Austen novels. I get the fact that there are parallels to be drawn between some of those books and the plight of life in Iran... but at times the literary criticism started to annoy me. I would've been happier if she had focused more on the lives and personalities of her students and herself.