#brennanbookblog

The Warehouse 

by Rob Hart

Blake Crouch told me to read this book.

Ok, not personally, but still. 

Initially, I read the first chapter, shrugged and put it down, slightly discouraged by the glossy magazine-sheen styled tone.

Then I received a BookBub email with Blake Crouch’s recommendation to read The Warehouse.

Having just acknowledged in my last B3 post that I might in fact jump off a bridge if the man suggested, I figured it was reasonable to read his book recommendation instead.

Naturally, I finished The Warehouse within a couple days because as the narrators and perspectives switched so did the tone of the book, making it as palatable as a CloudBurger at LivePlay. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Enter a world where The Cloud is king. Naturally, said world has gone to pot: climate change makes temperatures unendurable, unemployment is ubiquitous, water unpotable, meat scarce, and prospects dire for small business.  But at The Cloud, with fully stocked shelves of shiny goods, air-conditioned dorm rooms, built-in healthcare and tram cars, not to mention LivePlay entertainment and readily available Cloud Burgers, life is good. Well, not necessarily good, but tolerable. Well, not necessarily tolerable, but air-conditioned. 

So what if the shifts are 12 hours long, or there’s a $6 bank transfer charge, or you get docked ratings for not volunteering for extra work time? And so what if the bathrooms are constantly out of order, or the cinderblock rooms are the size of closets or your every move is tracked with a wristband?

The Warehouse is like if The Circle were written about Amazon and Apple combined featuring Steve Jobs and Lisbeth Salander set to an employee training video.

But don’t you enjoy having everything delivered at the click of a button? And for a such a reasonable cost? Have you ever wondered after you click “buy now” who is paying for the deficit? 

*B3 received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Whisper Network

by Chandler Baker

Once I had turned the final page of The Whisper Network, I revisited how the book was categorized. How was this page-turning whodunnit and what was actually done catalogued? Was this a thriller? A piece of literary fiction? A crime novel? Adult fiction? What I found it under was “Women’s Fiction.” 

Hm.  Then I wondered, is there a “Men’s Fiction” section?

When I started reading the book, I didn’t know what I was getting into, ostensibly a high-functioning office politics drama. But The Whisper Network is delightfully decadent and also so literary that I found myself highlighting passages because they rang so true. This has become more of a rarity in my experience of crime-type dramas and so-called “women’s fiction.” Books of this ilk tend to sacrifice savvy for salaciousness and three-dimensional characters for two-sided arguments. This book does neither. It creates a complex tapestry of the inner workings of a corporation, particularly the legal department - an apt department indeed, considering sexual harassment becomes the topic of debate. Where better to hash it out than amongst the best legal council possible? 

And yet, this plot makes the arguments regarding sexual harassment and power in the workplace that much more nuanced. Because if a list were to surface - say, a list of individuals to avoid in your career - would you take it an a gift and sidestep? Or would you see it as an offense against said individuals’ possibly very reputable characters? 

And I simply could not put it down. I couldn’t wait to see what happened to our varied heroines as they navigated the muddy waters of their careers. Because in those moments, they were us - waffling, debating, discerning, hashing, taking action, failing, and regretting, - plotting, researching, networking, investigating, reflecting, discovering, raging and triumphing. And so the craftiest bit of the novel is this - a device I cannot recall having seen - or, read. The book shifts regularly to first person plural. 

What? the Literary geek in you exclaims. 

Yes, “we” are included for whole chapters. And with each “we” it’s possible I’ve been manipulated into reading on and on, or it’s possible “we” includes me in the war so I don’t feel so alone in my own. But in the end, we don’t care one way or another, because just like in life, we don’t feel like there’s anywhere to go but forward.

*B3 received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

How to Walk Away &Things You Save in a Fire 

by Katherine Center

I have long believed that you have to be in the mood to read a certain type of book. Like with any relationship, the timing must be right, otherwise, you won’t be open to the writing voice/style/ content. Hot tea doesn’t quench every thirst and sushi doesn’t sate every palate. It’s possible Katherine Center’s books are the exception to that rule.

In content, the ironically and aptly titled How to Walk AwayandThings to Save in a Fire, are vastly different. How to Walk Away follows a lovelorn protagonist as she suffers quite immediately from a tragic accident throughout her complicated recovery; Things to Save in a Fire follows a stoic firefighter as she navigates a new bro-filled New England landscape.

In style, Center manages to create reading experiences that are simple without being simplistic and heart-warming without being heart-cloying. In short, they are satisfying reads - well crafted with personal triumph at the center, padded with bits of romance, conflict and existential crisis. The books are well-written, practically paced, bittersweet and fluid and with enough complication to keep the pages turning. And what’s particularly gratifying about these books is that the happy endings are not necessarily what you’d expect.

Things You Save in a Fire will be released August 2019, but you can grab a copy of How to Walk Away now. In fact, I just saw it on sale in Barnes & Noble.

It’s refreshing to know that there are books out there that are enjoyable no matter what the season. Like iced tea - a little sweet, a little tart, but extremely satisfying whenever you are thirsty for something tasty. 

*B3 would like to thank St. Martin’s Press for the ARCs!

Perfect Little World by Kevin Wilson

I really should have already written about Kevin Wilson’s The Family Fang as a page-turner. But, you know, hindsight. Family Fang is written for performance artist and Royal Tenanbaum junkies alike and as a card-carrying member in both arenas, it fulfilled all of my dark humor needs.

Perfect Little World, however, is the sweet quirky answer to my deep desire to run a commune. With a definitively-unique scientifically-sanctioned premise, Perfect Little World plays a little game of God within the structure of a 10-year social experiment. Ten families, each with one newborn, brought to live in a state-of-the-art complex to raise their children as one superfamily. All of the adults co-parent, and all of the families’ needs are met, from education of the children to professional development of the parents, housing, food, you name it. All this with one little caveat: the children will not know who their biological parents are until the age of 5.

Ready to sign up?

We see the delectable scenario play out through the eyes of the youngest and only single mother of the group, Izzy, whose own path to motherhood is a story within itself.

The perhaps most impressive part of the tale is how artistically Wilson writes about childbirth. His depiction is so vivid, so accurate, that I would not be surprised if he had actually given birth himself.

Signature to Wilson’s style, his words are funny and honest, freshly hewn buoyant logs floating down the river of darkness that is the ever-infectious world.

The only shortcoming of the book is that I would have read a novel twice the size I so longed to hear more of Izzy’s floundering tale.  

So does the experiment fail? Does it succeed?

You’ll have to draw your own conclusions.

The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena

Should you eat chocolate cake? Maybe not. Is it extremely satisfying when you do? Of course. The Couple Next Door provides your sugar fix. Is it going to provide you nutrition? Probably not. But it is so satisfying you may just want another helping.  

I got this book as part of my Book of the Month trial last night. I finished it this afternoon. Need I say more? 

Quintessential suspense at its best, with all the twists and turns of a classic who-dun-it, The Couple Next Door profiles Anne and Marco, newbie parents who leave their infant sleeping at home while they attend a dinner party next door. Can you guess where this is going? I tried at several turns, but there was always another curve in the road. 

I did the classic “I’ll just finish this chapter” move, but then my eyes would start scanning the next page.  300 pages later…Lapena kept this taut novel pinging until the final sentence. Will there be a sequel? If so, I’ll definitely be reading it.   If not, she wrote a killer ending. 

ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY by Charlie Jane Anders

I bought All the Bird in the Sky for a friend. Her bookclub vetoed this as a book suggestion, but she was excited about it, so in an act of solidarity with her deeply-rooted belief that books should be worthy of discussion, I deposited it on her bed one day and blamed book fairies for the drop. 

Then I promptly started reading it myself and stole it across the country with me before she could open it. (I had the best intentions. Also, spending money on a book purchased for a friend does not count as buying a book for yourself.)

A unique combination of the post-apocalyptic world of Vanessa Vaselka’s ZAZEN and the gritty magical reality of Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, Anders’ novel is possibly the only book that would be accurately categorized as Sci-Fi/ Fantasy. 

(There is this odd phenomenon - a bizarre combination of sci-fi and fantasy genres - that proliferates search engines and bookstores alike. It’d be like grouping cats and dogs together in a shelter section called Dats and considering the choice between the two arbitrary - which any cat or dog parent will indubitably dispute. But, this book is truly both Sci-Fi and Fantasy.) 

In the rich world Anders has invented, thick with angst and dense with meaning, a 2-second time travel device and talking animals coexist. It’s nostalgic and dread-filled, a children’s book for adults, an embedded warning for our collective future.  

Turning each page sounds the death nell for the end of the world - or a solemn harbinger for science that contains real magic - or is it magic that contains real science?  - that will save us all. 

The Kitchen House
By Kathleen Grissom
 
I didn’t want to read The Kitchen House.  I loathed the idea of spending any time in a fictionalized world built around slavery and southern plantation living. But reader after reader praised the novel, so I downloaded the “preview” before splurging the $1.99 on a title I was determined not to like.
 
By the time I tore through the first few chapters, the limited time sale was over and the book was $11.99. I didn’t care. I bought it immediately so I wouldn’t have to stop.

The Kitchen House follows the story of Lavinia, an Irish immigrant suppressing a terrible past at the tender age of 7. Purchased by a Virginian plantation owner, she works and lives in the Kitchen House, the slave quarters that serves the “Big House.” With a name like Lavinia, I was concerned for her well-being from the get-go. (See Titus Andronicus; Season 2 of Downton Abbey).  But Lavinia turns out to be plucky, curious and extremely loving.
 
Lavinia has a unique perspective as both an indentured servant to the Big House and as a white girl in the south.  While the Kitchen House inhabitants become her family, the Big House tenants also have their eyes on her.  And though she crosses many of the divides established as a result of slavery over her lifetime, in a way, she is the most isolated of all the characters. She doesn’t truly belong anywhere.
 
What’s interesting in my reluctance to read the book is that it directly mirrors Grissom’s reluctance to write it. While restoring a plantation tavern in Virginia, she happened upon a location in the plans called “Negro Hill.” It haunted her so much that one day journaling, a fictional story about its legacy poured onto her paper. Even Grissom herself was disturbed by the tale, but it, like the book’s heroine, was stubborn, and would not be altered.
 
The Kitchen House has heart smeared across every page. It’s laden with tears and tragedy, buoyed by stubborn determination and an inextinguishable need to survive. It hurts right below the sternum, like a punch to the gut that allows you to take bigger, fresher breaths.
 
The reluctant reader of a reluctant writer, it strikes me that perhaps the stories we avoid writing are the ones that most need to be written; and the stories we avoid reading may be the very ones we need to read the most.

Invisible by James Patterson & David Ellis

Hello.

My name is brennanbookblog.

And it’s been two days since my last James Patterson paperback.

I don’t really think I have a problem. I mean, this is the first time I’ve even read a Patterson paperback. I just know that rampant reading of Patterson runs in my family - my Dad’s side - and I wanted to curtail the unhealthy behavior before it became an issue.

Until last weekend, I hadn’t even considered reading a Patterson. (I was reading a Booker Man Prize Finalist at this time last month for God’s sake.) There was something too best-seller-y about Patterson, something for people who wanted a cheap high. I normally don’t even consider mass market publications as options. But I was stuck in the Philadelphia airport and I finished my Shonda Rhimes book on the incoming flight;  I thought this one wouldn’t hurt. I could stop myself if I wanted.

I have never really had a problem with Patterson before. I have shopped in stores that sell Patterson novels. I have been around them socially. I even have a copy of The Zoo on my shelf which I never opened.

I recognize the symptoms though, so I thought it’d be best to face this thing head on. My hands shake in anticipation of tattered Patterson novels at half price books. I “accidentally” take detours that bring me to the shelves and shelves of Patterson in the bookstore. I scrolled through his iBooks author page until the sixth reload and then realized that I had felt this feeling before.  I knew what I was doing.

I exhibited this behavior with Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse series - pre-ordering, marking my calendar for the next release date, for the next fix.  I had been addicted to fierce heroines before. I read books overnight in Michael Grant’s Gone Series, sometimes not leaving the house for days at a time; I purchased the entire series on Amazon in the middle of the night just so I wouldn’t run dry the next day.  And Jasper Fford’s Thursday Next Series - let’s face it: the signs were there.

There are a lot of scenarios that could play out with a serial killer/ cop-considered-crazy/ guarded-heart-gone-awry melting pot.

So, I know it’s gonna be hard. In a quick tally of Patterson titles, I numbered about 150. One hundred fifty. And there are stand-alones, sure, but I know that series are my weakness.

I vow here that I will not alienate my loved ones in favor of a quick read; I will not neglect my work just to cram in a few more chapters. I’m totally in control. I know my limitations. So I’ll be fine if I just read…. one ….more.

The Dead Circle by Keith Varney

I was tricked into reading another zombie book. What’s the adage? “Trick me once, shame on you, trick me twice, shame on me for not giving zombie books a chance?”  I read The Dead Circle in 48 hours and spent the next week attempting to reconcile my inability to stomach cannibalism (yes, I went there) with my desire to share the best page-turners with my fellow bibliophiles.

Of all of the books that I’ve read about supernatural post-apocalyptic infestations, this book serves as the most practical guide to how my spouse and I could survive the apocalypse.  And perhaps that’s what makes it the most disturbing zombie selection: it could possibly be recategorized amidst “non-fiction” or “survival guides” sometime in the future.

Until now, I thought a layperson like myself would be among the first to fall in the zombie apocalypse, but this book gives me hope. So many times, the people that survive are strikingly attractive, never need to go to the bathroom, and are facile with a semi-automatic. I am none of these.

The Dead Circle is gruesome, quirky, familiar, and terrifying. Don’t eat while reading. That’s all I’m saying. Probably avoid drinking as well.  

I’ll admit, there was a moment about two-thirds of the way through when I thought, Maybe it’d be better to turn into a zombie so I wouldn’t be eaten by one. That’s a truth I didn’t want face.

I’m not sure if Varney is planning a sequel, but based on the unconventional ending of the first, I’d pick it up tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ll keep this title on my nightstand in case I need some undead tips – and I plan on stocking up on bottled water tomorrow.