"The 5th Wave" by Rick Yancey

I think I've discovered the formula that is The 5th Wave:

Hunger Games' Katniss + male version of Prim + a Gale who doesn't know Katniss + Twilight's Edward Cullen = new hit YA dystopian

But, though I think The 5th Wave is certainly derivative from the boom in the YA dystopian genre and thus the books that came before it, it's also engaging, action-packed, and a lot of fun.

The book takes place in the time period following the Others' attack on earth. In the 1st Wave, they knocked out all the power (ala the TV show Revolution); in the 2nd Wave, they flooded anywhere near the coast; in the 3rd Wave, they used birds to carry a deadly virus; and in the 4th Wave, they revealed themselves living inside human bodies (ala Stephenie Meyers' The Host, a book which also has significant similarities with the novel). Now, few humans remain, among them Cassie, who's alone and on the run.

Cassie's narration makes up the first hundred pages (nearly a quarter of the novel), and it's through her flashbacks that we learn about the Others' invasion and the first through fourth waves. Cassie's an easy protagonist to root for, and the worldbuilding is interesting without being overwhelming.

After those first hundred pages, the book begins alternating points of view, and also--I thought--got somewhat weaker. It's jarring to go from Cassie to include her high school crush, Ben Parrish; her little brother, Sammy; and mysterious hunk Evan Walker. Their viewpoints give necessary insight into the larger picture, but their views are also more predictable.

The romance (?) between Cassie and Evan was also rough. Edward--um, sorry, I mean Evan--is gorgeous and understanding and perfect and, oh, gorgeous. And he smells like chocolate. But fortunately Cassie isn't Bella, and she maintains a healthy distrust of him and a healthy reaction to his annoyingly perfect persona. Yancey is also smart enough to portray stalking as creepy, not romantic. Nonetheless, their scenes together were always a bit too much for me.

But, like I said earlier, the actions comes quick, and there's tons of violence and gore for those needing the post-Hunger Games fix. Interesting that we've definitely reached a point where kids as young as seven killing other people is normal stuff.

Ultimately, what separated The 5th Wave from Hunger Games is that it's about the fact that humanity will always come together--even when it's most dangerous for us to do so--while Hunger Games continually isolates its protagonist. It's a more hopeful message, maybe, even amongst the carnage.

"A Constellation of Vital Phenomena" by Anthony Marra

I'm aware of how little I know about history--particularly the history beyond the United States--yet it's always somewhat surprising when I read a book about a period in history that not only do I know nothing about, I've never even heard about before. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena concerns the civil wars in Chechnya, covering from 1996-2004. Much of the situation is familiar from other countries: poverty and starvation; "disappearances" in the night; neighbors ratting on one another.

Constellation weaves together several individuals' stories. First, there's Akhmed, an failure of a doctor (he'd rather be an artist) who ends up with his neighbor's young daughter after the neighbor, Dokka, is taken to the Landfill. He brings the daughter, Havaa, to a surgeon, Sonja, in a nearby run-down hospital. He's never met the doctor, but he's seen her skilled work, and she reluctantly takes in Havaa and takes on Akhmed as an employee. From there the novel flits back and forth in time, exploring the developing relationship between Akhmed and Sonja, Sonja's relationship with her missing sister, and the relationship between Akhmed's neighbor Kassan and his informant son.

The book covers a terrible time in Chechen history, yet it does so with the right balance, never becoming too tragic or too falsely saccharine. The characters are fully developed and complex, and they're all so very human--no one's a complete hero or villain.

I find I don't have much to say upon finishing, but I cried through the entire ending--something that happens seldom. It doesn't end happily, but it doesn't end hopelessly either, and the mixture of sadness and possibility stayed with me.

"Rules of Civility" by Amor Towles

(book finished on August 4)

It's obvious that one's expectations going in to a book significantly affect how much a person will enjoy it. Over the years, I've also found that having no expectations, or not knowing anything about a novel, can be dangerous in its own way. A study found that "spoiling" a story actually increases our enjoyment of it, and, to some extent, I think pre-knowledge of a book's general direction also helps us like the book more. It doesn't mean there can't be surprises, but we like to know the situation we're getting into.

All of this is a roundabout way of introducing my experience with The Rules of Civility, a book I'd downloaded onto my Kindle a long time ago, but only got around to reading now. I had no idea what the book was about, and because of that, I don't think I enjoyed it as much as I might otherwise have done.

The book begins with friends Katey and Eve on New Year's Eve 1938. At a bar, they meet a rich man named Tinker, whom they begin a friendship with. Soon after, the three are in a car accident that leaves Eve somewhat disfigured, and she takes up residence (and a relationship) with Tinker. Now, from this beginning, I assumed the novel would be about Katey and Eve's relationship with each other and with Tinker. But, soon, Eve and Tinker largely drop out of the story (though Tinker importantly returns), which then focuses on the trials and tribulations of Katey's life as an independent woman in New York. There's nothing wrong with that story line, but I kept reading it as an interlude to the real story--I just couldn't see where it all was going.

I wanted to care more about Katey's attempts to find happiness and a career in the world, but I couldn't. Her various flings didn't hold much interest either. Again, I think I was supposed to be intrigued by her breaking of social taboos in the time period, but it never felt like she was being all that revolutionary. I also couldn't quite understand her relationship with Tinker nor her condemnation of him when she learned the truth of his past. After all, all of them were trying to climb the social ladder in their own way.

Maybe "period" novels just don't work for me. Or maybe reading on trains and planes was too distracting. Whatever the reason, I just couldn't see the point of Rules of Civility.

"The Long Walk" by Stephen King

(book finished on July 27)

It's appropriate that I read The Long Walk at the onset of a 10-day trip to England and Wales. Because one of the aspects that makes The Long Walk work is the outwardly mundane nature of its premise. One hundred boys sign up for a competition--and they start walking. The last one standing wins. There's no fighting, no subversive techniques (well, unless you count the fact that you are shot dead if you stop for more 30 seconds or drop below a four miles per hour pace three times in an hour). The winner just walks longer and farther than anyone else.

And the reason I mention my trip is because, at first, walking seems easy. Walking is easy. We all do it everyday. I really enjoy walking. But after spending a week of heavy walking, including walking eleven miles through downtown London one day, I can also say: walking is exhausting. By the end of my day in London, my shins hurt, my feet hurt, and my back hurt. I just wanted to sit down. Though, of course, I'd been able to take breaks throughout the day, eat normally, use a restroom, and go the speed I wished--the characters in the novel don't have that luxury.

King does an excellent job as well showing how grueling walking can be over the long run, both physically and mentally on the boys. The main character is Garraty, and like most characters in the novel, he doesn't have a clear motive for entering. At first, this bothered me. Because the winner gets anything he wants for life, I assumed the contestants would be either in dire straights financially or be full of bravado (like the Careers in Hunger Games). After all, you're almost certain to die in the competition. But, these characters are teenagers, so their entry makes sense. Everyone else was applying. Once they got in, they delayed backing out. They avoided thinking about the reality of what they were going to do. They were dissatisfied with their lives without really knowing why.

Since the plot of the novel is comprised solely of the characters walking, its strength has to be based on the relationships built between the characters. I enjoyed how the friendship of Garraty and McVries developed over time, and characters like Scramm, Stebbins, and Barkovitch are also drawn well.

In many ways, The Long Walk is an anti-Hunger Games, exploring through a somewhat similar concept the fight within the self rather than the fight between others or against a corrupt government (though the government in the book does seem corrupt, it's barely explored, and there's little evidence of a real tyranny). I'd highly recommend.

"The Burgess Boys" by Elizabeth Strout

I really enjoyed Strout's Olive Kitteridge, but, reading the summary of The Burgess Boys, I wasn't too excited. I think that's because anything that rings "family saga" tends to bore me--I can only read so much of tense relationships, fraught feelings, and long inner monologues. And a summary that begins "haunted by..." is even worse.

So I was predisposed against the novel, and maybe, for that reason, it met my expectations. It certainly wasn't bad, and Strout is adept at capturing the nuances and contradictions present in any relationships--romantic and family--but I just couldn't care all that much.

The novel is about the Burgess siblings--Jim, Bob, and Susan--though the brothers are the focus. The family grew up in Maine, but only Susan remains there with her son, Zach. After Zach is arrested for throwing a pig's head into a Somali mosque during Ramadan, the siblings are brought back together.

Jim is idolized by his siblings, and though we're told about his magnetism, it's hard to see his charm in the novel. He overreacts to Zach's situation (we're told he's the person who "takes care" of things, but he seems to mostly freak out and be grumpy) and is terrible to Bob. His abusive behavior to Bob is all the more confusing given that Bob seems like a decent guy. We're told by his siblings what a loser he is, but there's little evidence of that (other than some heavy drinking early on). I suppose the point is that sibling relationships don't always make sense to outsiders. Instead, within a family, people are assigned certain roles and characteristics, and those assigned personas are difficult to lose.

From the initial rush of activity after Zach's arrest, little happens. The characters go back and forth from New York City to Maine. They think a lot about life or whatever. They're mean to one another. 

As a character, Zach is the most underdeveloped. He's a scared, quiet kid, who had little reason to throw the pig's head in the mosque. It's clear he didn't mean it maliciously, and some of the officials' attempts to prosecute it as a hate crime is overreaching, but he also gets off the hook quite easy. I mean, the kid's scared, so he isn't responsible for anything?

The characterization of the individuals' relationship is expertly done, but there wasn't enough in their lives or problems for me to be invested.

"Where'd You Go, Bernadette?" by Maria Semple

Where'd You Go, Bernadette is not "one of the year's best books" (according to the cover), but it's a fun and occasionally funny summer read. The novel's written in epistolary form, a structure which often annoys me (it seems sophomoric), but the format works here to highlight the comedic elements of the story. Fortunately the compiler of the letters (the titular Bernadette's daughter, Bee) also includes straight first person narration where necessary, saving the book from unrealistic dialogue and action-heavy letters.

The story concerns Bernadette, a once rising star in the architecture field who fled L.A. with her husband and daughter after one of her projects was destroyed.  Bernadette's lived as a recluse since then, and her stress builds when Bee insists on a trip to Antarctica for her 8th grade graduation and Bernadette gets into a series of tiffs with Audrey, the mother next door whose son attends the same private school as Bee. And, as is suggested by the title, Bernadette eventually goes missing, leaving Bee and her father, Elgin, to find her.

Bernadette is an amusing character, making fun of the private school helicopter parents and riffing on various things that annoy her. It's a little hard to see the agoraphobic mother as a star architect and winner of the MacArthur Genius Grant, but that's okay. However, pretty quickly all the characters run together--there's little to distinguish the style and tone of one from the other. Even 15-year-old Bee sounds similar to her father, or her father's amorous admin.

Nonetheless, I plowed through the book, particularly since the letter format makes it easy to read. The action keeps moving quickly (disaster piling atop disaster), and it was worth it to see the descent of Audrey, even if she does come too close to a caricature of "snooty private school mom."

[Spoiler Alert] Yet the ending was really too far-fetched, not just because of the Antarctic heist but because it wraps up some significant issues without actually addressing them. I mean, Elgin is going to be a father to Soo-Lin's baby, so Bernadette can't just declare she will "swat her away [her]self" (326). He's also (though perhaps temporarily) unemployed and all their financial accounts have been taken over by the Russian mafia (or whatever), which means the family is more or less without money, which I would think would make Bernadette's return to real life rather difficult. And though perhaps Bernadette's hopeful letter (in which she is unaware of the baby and job loss), which ends the book, could be meant to be satirical, that tone wouldn't fit in with the rest of the novel, so I'm taking it to be intended as a sincere happy ending.

But, as always, I'm focusing on the flaws when it was an enjoyable two-day read, one I probably should have saved for my upcoming long plane ride to the UK!

Stray Thoughts:
- I have issue with novels where people have sex together one time and the woman gets pregnant (this; Water for Elephants). I mean, I know an unexpected pregnancy builds drama, but the rate is so misleadingly higher in books than in real life. I especially hate books where the virgin gets pregnant her first go (I'm looking at you, The Natural and A Thousand Splendid Sons, among others). How about all those people who have sex and don't get pregnant?
- I also hate the hyperbolic blurbs on books that are somewhat comedic. I mean, how often do you really laugh out loud during a book (Bossypants--hands down. But that's it.)? So the dude from People blurbing that Bernadette is "an uproarious comedy" or Redbook saying "[I'll] laugh [my] pants off" is just annoying.
- [Spoiler again] Was it not weird that the "Manjula" issue was wrapped up so perfunctorily? I mean, there's something about this first world woman whining about her privileged life in long letters to this Indian woman being paid 75 cents an hour, but, then, no, "It's the Russian mafia" and the whole issue is done. Also, "Manjula" did do everything Bernadette asked... 

"Argo" by Antonio Mendez and Matt Baglio

Like many people, I saw the movie version of Argo and enjoyed it (though I thought Lincoln was better). It's a great, tension-filled spy caper and feel-good-about-America film. Though the true account isn't quite as dramatic as the movie (but truth be told, there's still plenty of drama), it also does a better job of providing a comprehensive look at the CIA's work, which is interesting in and of itself.

The book is told by Mendez (played by Ben Affleck in the film), the decorated career CIA agent who orchestrated the rescue of six American embassy employees from Iran during the Iran Hostage Crisis in 1979 and 1980. Surprisingly to me, though it makes complete sense, Mendez was originally hired into the CIA because of his skills as an artist. He and others worked essentially as forgers, creating paperwork, stamps, whatever was needed for CIA agents and the people they worked with. I have to imagine this department is significantly different today, mostly relying on computer graphic technicians.

However, Mendez didn't stay just in that area, as he eventually rose to be Chief of Disguise! (okay, and then Chief of Authentication, but that's not exciting) How badass is that? I mean, did he have business cards that said "chief of disguise"? And he actually created disguises, a la Mission:Impossible! So I spent a lot of the early book geeking out that at least some of the cliche old spy movie stuff was actually true.

A majority of the book is spent on back story, establishing Mendez's career in the CIA and his department's workings. He also recounts several other successful exfiltrations he led. The actual exfiltration of the embassy employees only comes in the last few chapters.

One of the strengths of the film was the tense atmosphere that pervaded the action. Mendez also works to ramp up the tension, though he does so by repeatedly telling us that Iran was dangerous rather than showing. The movie also creates tension by making up lots of things that didn't actually occur, like taking a tour through Tehran's bazaar, being stopped at the airport and only making it out by showing the guards the movie storyboards, or the last minute call to the fake studio in Hollywood. In truth, the exfiltration went smoothly, to plan, without any hiccups or any moments of danger. But, that's just testament to the work that went into carrying it out successfully.

Though Mendez portrays the CIA positively, he also recognizes the enormous and problematic bureaucracy involved, especially compared to a country like Canada, which quickly and smoothly aided U.S. efforts in a way that put our government to shame. In the need to keep the CIA's secret, Canada received credit for the employees' escape (they did house the employees in their Iran embassy for three months), but such credit seems rightly due. Mendez and his colleagues may have orchestrated what happened, but Canada took much of the risk.