The Associate - John Grisham

My first John Grisham novel! ... though to be honest, I was only mildly impressed.

This book (legal thriller #20 for Grisham) is about Kyle McAvoy, an impressive Yale law student whose dreams of working a public service job after law school are forced to change when shadowy figures emerge and start blackmailing him with a videotape that revives a five-year-old rape accusation. Kyle does as his blackmailers tell him, and accepts a job at a huge Wall Street firm that represents a military contractor involved in a hefty lawsuit. That client is the blackmailers' reason for blackmailing Kyle: as long as he feeds them information about the $800 billion case, then they won't expose his past.

Honestly ... it's a decent story, but I thought it would be more of an intellectual legal thriller. It was really more of a simple story which happened to take place at a law firm. And it could have easily been told in way less than 400 pages! I think the middle hundred or so pages could be shortened dramatically. Some parts were quite unbelievable, like this part explaining Kyle's experiences growing up with his dad, an attorney:

"Every lawyer and every judge in York knew Kyle, and it was not unusual for him to slip into an empty courtroom, present a motion to a judge, argue its merits if necessary, then leave with a signed order."

A high school student?? Really?! However, there were other parts that I could totally relate to and smile about, like when Kyle was studying for the bar exam, and this part about billing:

"It took an hour to read every word in the file. One point two hours to be exact, and suddenly he had no reluctance in billing Placid for 1.2 hours, or $360 for the review. Not long ago, say about ninety minutes, he found it hard to believe he was worth $300 an hour. He hadn't even passed the bar! Now, though, he had been converted."

Despite my critiques, I'll definitely be willing to check out the movie when it comes out in 2010 (yes - Grisham must have movie rights lined up while he's still writing!) - and I'm willing to read some more Grisham novels. He's got enough to choose from!

Oh - and many thanks to my buddy Cole for giving me this book to add to my library!! :)

Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston

The main character in this book, Janie Crawford, is a middle-aged black woman who has just returned to Florida after being gone for a while. The people in the town start to gossip about her and try to speculate what happened to her most recent husband, Tea Cake, after he's found dead, and the plot of the majority of the book is framed by the story as Janie relates it to her friend Pheoby ...

Janie's life can be divided up into three time periods, during each of which she was married to three very different men. First: her marriage to Logan is unromantic and uninspired. She then runs away with Joe, who forbids her to associate with "common folk"; Joe's goal seems to be to shape Janie into what he considers to be the perfect wife through both physical and emotional abuse.

"He wanted her submission and he'd keep on fighting until he felt he had it. So gradually, [Janie] pressed her teeth together and learned to hush. The spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor. It was there to shake hands whenever company came to visit, but it never went back inside the bedroom again ... The bed was no longer a daisy-field for her and Joe to play in. It was a place where she went and laid down when she was sleepy and tired."

Joe eventually dies, and Janie seems quite relieved at finally achieving her freedom from him. She starts seeing a man who goes by the name of Tea Cake - a man twelve years younger than her. One part in the book that really shocked me is where Janie is discussing her relationship with a neighbor, Mrs. Turner. Mrs. Turner refuses to have a black doctor see her; she also refuses to go into black-owned business because "colored folks don't know nothin' 'bout not business." Even worse:

"Ah ain't got no flat nose and liver lips. Ah'm uh featured woman. Ah got white folks' features in mah face. Still and all Ah got tuh be lumped in wid all de rest. It ain't fair. Even if dey don't take us in wid de whites, dey oughta make us uh class tuh ourselves."

Apparently this extended exchange with Mrs. Turner received a lot of criticism from Harlem Renaissance writers: many said that it "favored" lighter-skinned African Americans, though I didn't see it as such (I agree with some other critics in that it more "exposed" the division between light-skinned and dark-skinned African Americans).

Anyway, at the end of the story, Tea Cake gets bitten by a rabid dog and gradually gets very sick and delusional. I won't spoil the ending, though I will share one of my mom's favorite passages:

"The day of the gun, and the bloody body, and the courthouse came and commenced to sing a sobbing sigh out of every corner in the room; out of each and every chair and thing. Commenced to sing, commenced to sob and sigh, singing and sobbing. Then Tea Cake came prancing around her where she was and the song of the sigh flew out of the window and lit in the top of the pine trees."

My mom pointed out the alliteration in that paragraph ... true, something that I likely would not have picked up on! I really enjoyed reading this book, though it was very hard for me to get into the phonetic spelling of the dialect spoken by all of the characters. I think I finally stopped having to re-read every page maybe a third of a way through the book. But this is definitely a classic piece of American literature that I wouldn't mind re-reading some other time to try to more fully enjoy all of its symbolism and literary devices.

Body Language 101 - David Lambert

This book is basically a guide to understanding body language. The material is divided into categories like "signs of conflict, "getting together" (including an interesting subcategory called "courtship"), and "keeping your distance," complete with color illustrations and even research from zoology and kinesics to describe the origins of the body language. I was also very impressed with the author's extensive explanations of gender and cultural differences.
Though much of the material was common sensical, the book does have some interesting tidbits: i.e. you know how people cross their fingers for "good luck"? Apparently that actually originated as a symbol of the cross on which Jesus died, and so "crossing your fingers" used to be a way to ask for God's protection. It seems so secular now! Some other parts I found particularly interesting:

"The consensus among researchers appears to be that women display more courting signals than men .... Women give off subtler courtship signals than men and are sharper at spotting those made by the opposite sex."

Also: not that I thought about it much, but I would have guessed that handshaking has been around for centuries. Apparently, I was wrong: "As a gesture of openness showing that the hand is empty of weapons, handshaking would seem to have early origins. Some people think it goes back to the Roman practice of grasping the forearm, but handshaking as we usually do it today perhaps began only two centuries ago."

Next time you observe two men getting into an argument, if you see either of them display this type of body language you might smile: "Two men who are strangers and feeling unsure of themselves might try to proclaim their masculinity by standing with hands on hips, or fingers or thumbs tucked into the front of the belt, a gesture which draws attention to the genital region. Some researchers claim this posture means 'I can dominate you because I am virile.'"

My First White Friend: Confessions on Race, Love, and Forgiveness - Patricia Raybon

How about this for the first page in a book:

"God help me.
I stopped hating white people on purpose about a year ago. I didn't tell anybody. I couldn't. If I did, I would have to explain how I started hating in the first place. And I really didn't know then myself.
I just hated."

In this very heartfelt book that is part memoir, part social commentary, and part self-help, Raybon explains how she found herself hating white people for years. Eventually, she decides to trace her journey from "rage and racial reasoning" and starts trying to practice forgiveness. She realizes that she would first have to hunt out the flaws in herself; and in the words of the gospel, realize that "It's me, it's me, it's me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer. Not my brother, not my sister, but it's me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer."

Part of what I loved so much about this book was the author's candor - she incredibly real. She really draws the reader into feeling her anger and her pain - whether it's from the perspective of sympathy or empathy. From one part:

"'Tell me I'm OK. Befriend me, hire me, admire me, give me a good table at your restaurant, sell me a house in your neighborhood, talk to me, listen to me, look at me, love me.' But white people can't satisfy all these needs - because nobody externally can possibly fill up somebody else's internal longings. That inability, of white folks to satisfy my emotional needs, has been part of my disappointment with white people. I hated them, indeed, for not filling me up."

I also really liked this book because it followed how the author went from feeling such anger to achieving forgiveness. That is of course a skill that is useful in any context, not just racial forgiveness.
Thank you to my dear line sister Andrea for this great recommendation :)

Black is the New White - Paul Mooney

I had no idea that Paul Mooney was the writer behind Richard Pryor; not to mention his significant work for In Living Color and Saturday Night Live! (of course, most of us younger folks know his work on The Chappelle Show). This is an interesting combination of a biography/memoir and an absolutely hilarious commentary on race and society. Mooney helped a lot of comedians "make it" - i.e. Eddie Murphy, Robin Williams, Sandra Bernhard, etc. - while he mostly stayed behind the scenes. He's got great stories of life in Hollywood with these big names, and he of course tells these stories in a hilarious way. One part I've thought about several times since I've read the book:

"For white people, Bill [Cosby] is the perfect Negro. He's the Sidney Poitier of comedy, very clean-cut and articulate. White folks love to use that word to describe us. Articulate. It means we don't grunt like jungle savages."

Ha! Another funny part:

"...We decide to keep all of my money in Mama's bra, since that's the equivalent of hiding it under the mattress. There's a lot of room in there. My money goes into the left cup. I always know where it is. I do my business at the Bank of Mama's Left Tit."

Clearly, if you aren't one for the "m-f word" or a lot of crude humor - this book is not for you. It wasn't a fabulous memoir or book of humor, but I'd give it a solid three and a half stars out of five.

House of Sand and Fog - Andre Dubus III

Instantly a top-5 choice. A simply beautiful story.
The book begins from the point of view of Colonel Behrani, a man who was once wealthy in Iran and is now a struggling immigrant in California. He has blown most of his money trying to keep up appearances in the U.S., and is struggling to make ends meet for his family. He sinks what money he has left into a house that he buys at an auction, not knowing the direction in which the purchase would lead his family ...
The next chapter is told from the point of view of Kathy Niccolo, the former owner of the house that Colonel Behrani bought. Kathy is incredibly emotionally unstable: her husband has recently left her, and the house (an inheritance from her dad) is all that she has left. When the house is foreclosed upon, Sheriff Lester Burdon helps her try to get it back - but ends up falling in love with her. Lester ultimately becomes obsessed with Kathy and with helping her try to get the house back.
For the majority of the book, the chapters alternate in terms of from whose point of view they are told. The author does an excellent job of making the reader feel what the character was feeling. He perfectly captures the way in which Colonel Behrani and his family, as recent Iranian immigrants, speak English; he also does a great job at weaving in a lot of Persian/Iranian culture. I could feel how determined Colonel Behrani is to keep the house: to him, it's his key to the American dream and to redeeming himself as the provider for his family.
In the chapters told from Kathy's point of view, I could feel her desperation and her feelings for Lester. Some chapters later in the book are told in third person, and in those chapters I could feel Lester's confusion and how torn he was between his developing obsession for Kathy and his pain in leaving his wife and children.
While I was reading this, I was so into it that I got annoyed when the phone would ring and interrupt me. I didn't want to put it down! I plan on renting the movie this weekend (it was made into a movie that came out in 2003) - I hope it doesn't disappoint me!

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

What a strange book ...
In the first chapter, Arthur Dent is upset that bulldozers are about to demolish his house. His neighbor, Ford Prefect (an alien who's been posing as an out of work actor on earth), comes over and tells Arthur that he has to tell Arthur the most important thing he's ever heard ... that the earth is about to be demolished to make space for a freeway. Suddenly, the loss of Arthur's house doesn't seem that terrible ...
The rest of the book is about Arthur and Ford's adventures as they travel through the galaxy. Some parts of this book were just downright strange ... maybe they were above my head, or not just my kind of humor? Although I do know that I'm not much of a sci-fi fan, except for Star Trek (I know, go figure). But it definitely did have its funny points. One of my favorites:

A voice comes in and announces that "the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building of a hyperspatial express route" ... and that "regrettably, [earth] is one of those scheduled for demolition." When the people of earth start panicking and objecting, the voice tells them that all of the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in Alpha Centauri for fifty years ... so they've "had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it's far too late to start making a fuss about it now ... What do you mean you've never been to Alpha Centauri? For heaven's sake, mankind, it's only four light-years away, you know. I'm sorry, but if you can't be bothered to take an interest in local affairs that's your own lookout. Energize the demolition beams."

I also like this part:

"One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very obvious, as in It's a nice day, or You're very tall, or Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you all right? At first Ford had formed a theory to account for this strange behavior. If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months' consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favor of a new one. If they don't keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working."

There are some die hard Douglas Adams fans out there, so even though I was left a bit bewildered ... maybe it was just me. Give this book a try :)