"Bookshelf," by Alex Johnson

A few days ago, I was at our university library to pick up an academic book I had requested from Link-Plus, a service that allows us to borrow books from other libraries in a consortium. While I was at the library, I checked out the “new books” display in the lobby area, as I usually do when I am in the library for any reason. I never know what I will find. This time, a square, brightly colored book picturing a curved bookshelf on its cover caught my eye. Titled “Bookshelf” (Thames & Hudson, 2012), by Alex Johnson, it beautifully features one or more unique bookshelves on each of its 269 pages. There is a brief description of each illustration, listing the designer, materials, etc., and these are interesting and useful, but the illustrations are the stars of the book. What a wealth of gorgeous, creative, artistic shelves! What a variety of materials, sizes, shapes, and colors! Some of them are both practical and beautiful; others look more artistic than realistically usable, but all of them blend art and an unspoken tribute to the power of books in people’s lives and homes. The colors, layout, and thick, coated paper all contribute to the aesthetic pleasure of perusing this book. A bonus enjoyment for those of us at USF is that the book includes a picture of the Cable Car Book Cart that was custom built by students and staff at the USF Gleeson Library two years ago. This cart is made of wood, and “was built in homage to San Francisco’s iconic cable cars.” The cart is occasionally displayed in the library lobby. Book lovers and artists alike will enjoy this book.

"The Essential 'Dykes to Watch Out For,'" by Alison Bechdel

What a feast “The Essential ‘Dykes to Watch Out For’” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008) is! It is a generous selection from over 20 years of Alison Bechdel’s comic strip (and from several earlier collections) portraying the lives of a group of lesbian friends and lovers, parents and children, neighbors and coworkers, and their friends and families. The book is physically large, to accommodate the 10-12 panel comics, each filling a page, which are crammed with drawings and dialogue, so that it is easy to read them and to enjoy all the wonderful details in each. The facial expressions alone are priceless. The book is full of life, of observations, of politics, of social history, of romance, of flirting, of sex, of commitment, of breakups, of gossip, of issues about money and housing and education, and best of all, of friendships and relationships as they shift and grow and change and sometimes end. Getting lost in the book is like getting blissfully lost in a sprawling Victorian novel. Why is Mo (who seems to be the author's alter ego) so fixated on the state of the nation and of politics? What is it like to be estranged from one’s parents, or to take care of them as they age? What are the lives of the pioneer lesbians who started raising children like? Why does Sparrow take up with Stuart, a man? Do Clarice and Toni get tired of being the married couple role model? How about the child who is born a boy but knows she is a girl? Somehow Bechdel manages to seamlessly weave together the social history of the times with the stories of the individual characters and their families, communities, and relationships. This book and its characters are variously funny, moving, sympathetic, maddening, unpredictable, charming, annoying, informational, illuminating, and inspiring. And whatever the reader’s own sexual identity is, she or he will identify with some of the characters, and want others of them for friends.

"Mending," by Sallie Bingham

I had read good reviews of “Mending: New and Selected Stories” (Sarabande, 2011), by Sallie Bingham, but when I read the collection, I only mildly enjoyed reading the stories. The adjectives that kept occurring to me were “pensive” and “plaintive.” When I look again at the stories, I see that they are perfectly good ones, but somehow they didn’t engage me. So that is all I will say about “Mending.”

"The House of Tyneford," by Natasha Solomons

Did you love “Upstairs, Downstairs”? And “Downton Abbey”? If so, you will love “The House of Tyneford” (Plume, 2011), a novel by Natasha Solomons, as well. It is one of those very English stories, and tells of a lovely, rather isolated area on the coast of England, with its old English country house and all its traditions, along with the village people nearby, fishing and tending sheep. It is all very charming, old-fashioned, and idyllic. But it is also very serious. The time is just before World War II, and Elise, a young Jewish woman from an educated and well-off family in Vienna is sent to the English house to be a housemaid, a common event during that time period, used as a way to keep the young woman out of harm’s way during the increasingly brutal treatment of Jewish people in Austria and elsewhere. She is separated from her novelist father and her opera singer mother, who are hoping for visas to the United States, and from her older sister, who has already emigrated to the United States with her professor husband. Elise soon begins a romance with the son of the house, and she moves in and out of various strata of people in the house and in the village, not quite belonging anywhere, but making friends and connections nevertheless. She also falls in love with the area, and especially with living by the sea. Meanwhile she is constantly worried about her family members, misses them desperately, and is consoled just a little by her possession of a family viola with her father’s latest novel manuscript stuffed into it. As the war begins and proceeds, there are many twists and turns to the story. There is danger, sweetness, romance, sadness, loss and redemption. This is an affecting story, one that I enjoyed very much.

"A Theory of Small Earthquakes," by Meredith Maran

I have seen Meredith Maran's journalistic writing in The San Francisco Chronicle and other periodicals for some years now. I also read her thoughtful and revealing 2001 nonfiction book about the lives and issues of students at Berkeley High School, "Class Dismissed." She has now published her first novel, "A Theory of Small Earthquakes" (Soft Skull Press, 2012). One reason I read it was that much of it takes place in Berkeley, just across the Bay from here, and it is always enjoyable to read novels set in places one knows pretty well. But beyond that, the novel is a story of the times -- of the past 30 years -- with much context about social issues during that time. In particular, it is the story of two women who met at college and fell in love, moved to Berkeley, decided to have a child, and then...well, I don't want to give away the plot, but it involves another character, a child, a family mystery, much drama, lifelong friendships, and the changing times. And the "earthquakes" of the title? One of the characters, normally fearless, is very afraid of earthquakes, and falls apart each time a small earthquake occurs, which is fairly often in California. She is partially reassured by the theory that small earthquakes release pressure and therefore lower the risk of larger earthquakes. This novel is very readable, with strong and interesting characters and a good balance of a compelling story and the addressing of social issues.

"Preacher's Lake," by Lisa Vice

“Preacher’s Lake” (Dutton, 1998), by Lisa Vice (author of “Reckless Driver,” which I posted about on 6/15/12), is a challenging novel to read: it is long, it has a large cast of characters, and its characters live in difficult circumstances. Yet despite these challenges, or perhaps partly because of them, this is a book that catches up the reader -- at least this reader -- and doesn’t let her go. The first challenge is the 472-page length. OK, it’s long, but I can handle that. The second challenge is the many characters, introduced in rapid succession, in short vignettes, making me wonder if I can keep all the characters straight in my mind. The novel continues to move quickly among the characters, and then gradually some of them start to meet and interact with others; gradually I figure out who everyone is and how they connect with each other. Several of the main characters are lesbians. Probably the biggest challenge for a middle-class reader is to acclimate to the rather isolated and hardscrabble Maine setting where almost all the characters are poor, just barely working class, or just getting by. Some live without electricity or running water or indoor bathrooms. Life is a struggle. Besides the economic issues, there are social issues, issues of class. Typical readers of contemporary fiction do not often encounter this kind of setting and these kinds of characters, especially in the United States. This novel does something important by forcing readers to see poverty and struggling characters up close. Although I am not personally familiar with the area or with people in these circumstances, I am convinced that the portrayals in this novel are authentic. (The author herself lived in Maine at one point.) But the characters are not defined only by their economic and social conditions; they are vibrant, thoughtful, quirky, caring people as well. They worry about their children, fall in love, sometimes settle for partners for practical reasons, yearn for better lives, wish for partners and children, try to improve their lots, and move in and out of the area; in other words, although the setting is different, the human feelings are the same ones that characters in other novels experience in wealthier urban areas.

The Perils of Self-Publishing

It is great that nowadays anyone can publish a book through self-publishing/”vanity” presses. Writers with little or no chance of book contracts with regular publishers can now write about their experiences, express their feelings, exercise their creativity, and see their names and words in print. Self-published books are especially good for those who mainly want to share their writing with family and friends. And some of them are quite respectably well written and produced. (Full disclosure: Some years ago, two colleagues/friends and I edited the self-published memoir of our late academic mentor and friend.) But there are often serious problems with self-publishing as well. Books definitely suffer without the editorial and marketing support provided by a traditional publisher. A huge negative is the lack of editing. I was reminded of this recently while reading a self-published memoir (which shall remain nameless) that was so badly written as to be almost incoherent in places. The author was obviously passionate about his topic -- a certain aspect of his life story -- and that angry, betrayed feeling came through loud and clear. But the writing was terrible in so many ways. It was disorganized, illogical, and ungrammatical. Words were misspelled and misused. It sounded as if the writer had sat down and spewed out a long rant, and then never revised or edited it in any way. I wish for his own sake that the author had hired an editor, or at least asked a literate friend to help him edit the book. Reading this book was a painful process; I only persevered because the book was useful for my research.