Off the Books - Soma Mei Sheng Frazier

 Soma Mei Sheng Frazier's Off the Books is one of those novels I never found myself getting fully comfortable with despite Frazier managing to keep me interested enough in its plot to want to see how it would all turn out in the end. 

The novel's main character, Mei, is a Chinese American woman who has recently dropped out of Dartmouth to return to her Oakland home. She has no real idea about the rest of her life but is soon working as a limo driver who can be depended upon to keep her mouth shut about her passengers and where she takes them. As a result, Mei becomes the go-to driver for a many of the area's sex workers. It is Mei's uncle who eventually comes up with a plan to have Mei go indie by driving the clients he chooses for her in her own vehicle, effectively cutting out the middleman and even more effectively protecting the privacy of her clients. 

That's how Mei meets Henry, a handsome Chinese American burdened with a huge suitcase who wants to be driven across the country to New York. Henry is a strange one. He has enough money to stay in the most luxurious hotels along the route but he and Mei often stay in some of the rattiest hotel rooms imaginable. And Henry appears to be in no big hurry to get to New York. Instead, he peppers the trip with frequent rest stops during which he disappears to lug his big black suitcase out of the car in private over and over again.

Before long, Mei is wondering just what can be in the suitcase - especially after she begins to suspect that whatever is inside might be alive. And when she finally does learn the "truth," she stays more confused than ever about why Henry really wants to go to New York.

The plot of Off the Books is clever enough, and each of its main characters has more good moments than bad ones, but I found myself in a struggle to really care much what happened to any of them despite the danger that they often appear to be in. Mei and Henry never seemed real enough for me to feel empathy for them despite their plight. 

I blame that partially on Frazier's prose style, one in which she jumps from present to past and back again in almost every chapter, all the while inserting whole sentences in Chinese without ever making very clear what was being said between various characters. There are a lot of things to like about the book: the quirky characters met on the long road trip, the hook about what could possibly be in the humongous suitcase Henry continuously wrestles with, the good natured humorous jabs that Mei's uncle often takes at her, etc. But I could never get past that point in a novel where the reading stops feeling like a chore and becomes a treat to look forward to. I always notice when that "click" happens for me; this time it never did.

A Quick Hello with More to Follow

 I just realized that it's been a week since I've posted anything on Book Chase. That's kind of the way it's been going around here lately, it seems. It was only after we got power back on a few days ago that we both realized how exhausted we both were by the combination of constant heat, humidity, and limited sleep we had experienced for over a week. Strangely enough, that only became obvious to both of us after the AC came back on and we realized how little energy we had available to direct toward the clean-up still required. Thankfully we are both feeling much better the last couple of days, and things around here - despite the massive debris pickup still to be done in the county - are almost back to normal now. 

I hope to post again later today or in the morning about BOOKS. Can't wait to get back to some book-talk because the two books I've been concentrating on this week both proved to be mental lifesavers. I finished Tuned Out, the British time travel novel I mentioned (loved it), and I'm really enjoying the Jane Tennison novel I'm reading, The Dirty Dozen.

More later...hope you are all doing well.

What I'm Reading This Week (July 15, 2024)

 

Well, not much really.

Just staying as cool as possible these last few days while trying to find decent hot food at least once a day, gasoline for the small generator that has made life bearable, and making sure that various small lights, phones, and other devices are charged up by the time it gets pitch dark has taken a lot more time than I imagined it would. And even when I do sit down to read, I'm either too sleepy to concentrate, too hot to concentrate, or it's too dark to read because all the window covers are closed to minimize the inside temperature. (I hope I don't come across as a whiner, but I'm so frustrated by the totally incompetent response of CenterPoint to this storm that it feels good to vent a little.)

So I've been lucky if I read 30 pages a day, and that's not a lot of progress on the two 400-plus-page books I'm reading right now. That's the bad news; the good news is that both books are good.

This 2019 book is the fifth in Lynda La Plante's Tennison series, but it's the first one I've read even though I've enjoyed the Tennison television shows for a number of years now. Turns out, it's not a bad place to jump into the written series because it's set in 1980 just as Jane Tennison becomes the first female detective ever assigned to the Met's elite Flying Squad, otherwise known as the "Sweeney." I don't know about the rest of the series, but The Dirty Dozen is very much a detailed police procedural, and I'm really enjoying it.

Keith Pearson's tuned out makes for a real change of pace from the Tennison novel. I'm only about 60 pages in, and I'm still waiting on the "time travel" aspect that's promised in the book's subtitle, but I do find the prose style very readable. So far, it's the story of a 30-year-old university graduate who is sobered by his (and his whole generation's) chances of ever achieving the kind of financial success and security that all previous generations have achieved. He's tired of all the advice his parents  give him - and somehow (I think) manages to time travel back to the time they were his age. It's all very light, with a tone somewhere between sarcasm and irony, and I hope it remains so when the time travel bit finally starts.

I still have some reviews to help keep me awake and busy enough to forget that it's now 87 degrees at my desk as I write this up at 10:45 a.m. So here it is, Day 8 of no power, with a target date of "end-of-day July 19" for reconnection to the grid and serious doubt on my part that that will really happen. Of the 2.3 million people who lost power during Huricane Beryl, some 250,000 of us remain to be powered up. Lucky me being in the last 11%. 

Later, guys.

The Big Door Prize - M.O. Walsh

 

I have to admit right up front that the main reason I bought The Big Door Prize in the first place was because the first thought that popped into my head when I read its title was that hilarious country song "In Spite of Ourselves" sung by John Prine and Iris Dement. (I should add that the book was on sale in a Dollar Store I go into about twice a year for $1, too, so I didn't have a lot to lose by taking a chance on it.)

Well as it turns out, The Big Door Prize is a lot of fun.

The book opens with a short prologue that leads with this question:

How can you know that your whole life will change on a day the sun rises at the agreed-upon time by science or God or what-have-you and the morning birds go about their usual bouncing for worms?"

 For the little town of Deerfield, Louisiana it all begins on the day a mysterious new machine appears in the local grocery store, a machine that promises to use your DNA sample to tell you exactly what you are best suited for in life. For the paltry sum of two dollars you can find out what you are destined to be if you only have the courage to go for it. Soon enough, a surprisingly large segment of Deerfield's citizens have decided to go for it, and the town is unlikely ever to be the same again.

The townspeople are abruptly quitting their longtime jobs to become cowboys, musicians, magicians, survivalists living off the grid, and athletes. One woman even believes it is her destiny to marry into one of the world's royal families. Within just a few days marriages are threatened, lives are put in danger, and everyone seems happier with themselves than ever. But now the real question is where did the DNAMIX machine come from and who is behind it?

The Big Door Prize may not be the deepest novel in the world, but it manages to combine fun and humor with an exploration of the conflicts involved with remaining forever true to oneself if that comes into conflict with family and community responsibilities. There is also a much darker side plot interwoven throughout the novel that adds another reason to keep turning the pages of The Big Door Prize. If you're in the mood for something a little different, you might enjoy this one a lot. 

Listen carefully to the lyrics of "In Spite of Ourselves" and you'll see why the book title led me directly to thinking about one of my old favorites. 

So Now I Get It - Hurricane Beryl Teachable Moments

Things I've figured out over the last four days (I'm kind of slow sometimes) being without power following Hurricane Beryl:

• Even if you prefer cooking on an electric stovetop, there's a huge advantage after a hurricane in having a gas stovetop,

• Unless you love cold showers and baths, a tankless water heater is not your friend because it requires electricity in order to rapidly superheat water whenever you need hot, or even warm, water,

• A  built-in home generator is worth its weight in gold if you don't have one when you need it for an extended period, and if you try to order one now, it will literally cost more than the value of a full half-pound of gold (somewhere between $16 and $22 thousand),

• one kind-hearted neighbor who is willing to share what he has in order to ease your situation is a life-changer. 

From what I understand, the number of people without power in the greater Houston area now totals about 978,000, down from the original number of 2.3 million people without four days ago. Of course, those numbers come from CenterPoint Energy, one of the most inept public utility companies in the nation - whose executives know that when this is all over, an accounting will be demanded by the governor, the mayor, and the Public Utility Commission. 

This has all the makings of a summer that will be remembered for all the wrong reasons.

Look for Me There - Luke Russert

Luke Russert's Look for Me There is, I think, a pretty frank and honest travel book and memoir, and I want to give Russert full credit for that. But in a nutshell, for me it's: not a bad book by an author I am left with mixed feelings about.

Luke Russert is the son of the beloved and universally respected news journalist Tim Russert. Tim Russert, while at work for NBC, died suddenly from a heart attack on June 13, 2008 while Luke (then 22 years old) was traveling in Italy with his mother. By October 2016, Luke himself had been eight years on the NBC career path he began after his father's death. But he was unhappy, unsatisfied, unfulfilled (you can choose the word or right combination of words), and decided to walk away from his job in order to explore the world for himself. 

"What pains me isn't just a latent wanderlust. The last eight years have been such a whirlwind that I've never fully processed my grief for Dad. It's apparent that I've spent so much time honoring his legacy that I've never truly accepted his death. Worse, by honoring that legacy, I have failed to forge my own life. I'm thirty years old and have no idea who I am..."

 So Luke, largely on his mother's dime, begins to travel from country to country as he slowly morphs into an Instagram addict who is only satisfied after he "drops a bomb" on his favorite social media platform. He stops traveling for pleasure and what he can learn about himself and the countries he explores, and begins to imagine that his Instagram followers actually need the content he posts:

"Whereas in the past I may have taken a moment to prep for the day so I could get more out of it, now I'm more focused on just getting it done and taking the needed pictures. Pictures are my muse. They provide content and, on Instagram, give people an idea of what I do. They somehow make me feel that I matter."

 I'm still not sure if Russert is telling me that he understands the shallowness of this admission, or if he's justifying the kind of traveler he soon enough became. Part of the reason that I wonder this is how terribly he resented his mother's attempts to tell him it was time to come home and get on with the rest of his life, to find some purpose in life other than keeping his Instagram followers happy enough to attach little hearts and comments to every picture he posted. 

But here's where it gets tricky. Luke grew up an over-protected son. According to Luke, his father never wanted to take a risk; he never traveled outside the country; he always had a plan for anything that could happen to himself or his family. And Tim expected Luke to live the same way. So did Luke begin his world travels as a way to run from that part of his father's legacy? Does traveling around the world solo make Luke feels as if he's beaten his father at something?

Long after everyone around him sees it, Luke finally does come around to the idea that he is wasting his life:

"What causes me the anxiety that leads to self-medicating? What am I searching for? Why did I feel so empty after living such a full, blessed, and privileged life?...Being part of a legacy also meant I was living in loss. I come to realize that I'm also beset with not only inadequacy but also its sibling - fear of failure - along with a real fear of mortality."

 Wrong as I likely am to be, this is where I end up with what Luke Russert has to say in Look for Me There:

Luke was a young man trying to live up to the expectations of a father he completely admired but to whom he felt that he could never measure up. His answer was to give up and wander the world and life for three years, finally deciding to be more like his mother: "spontaneous, creative, and experimental." 

Nothing wrong with that, I suppose. I hope he has his life together now.