The Teleportation Accident

The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beauman
Sceptre - July 19, 2012
357 pages

HISTORY HAPPENED WHILE YOU WERE HUNGOVER
When you haven't had sex in a long time, it feels like the worst thing that is happening to anyone anywhere. When you're living in Germany in the 1930s, it probably isn't. But that's no consolation to Egon Loesser, whose carnal misfortunes will push him from the experimental theatres of Berlin to the absinthe bars of Paris to the physics laboratories of Los Angeles, trying all the while to solve two mysteries: whether it was really a deal with Satan that claimed the life of his hero, the great Renaissance stage designer Adriano Lavicini; and why a handsome, clever, charming, modest guy like himself can't, just once in a while, get himself laid. From the author of the acclaimed Boxer, Beetle comes a historical novel that doesn't know what year it is, a noir novel that turns all the lights on, a romance novel that arrives drunk to dinner, a science fiction novel that can't remember what "isotope" means, a stunningly inventive, exceptionally funny, dangerously unsteady and (largely) coherent novel about sex, violence, space, time, and how the best way to deal with history is to ignore it.
LET'S HOPE THE PARTY WAS WORTH IT

You know those summaries of books where you really wonder if whoever was tasked with doing that truly read the book or if they just skimmed it and decided to come up with a wild hook to get people into the novel? Well, I think that's what happened here. Maybe thirty pages are devoted to the Lavicini mystery, and it isn't even about a deal with Satan, It's about whether the "Teleportation Accident" of 1679 was actually an accident.

So, the book. Not one of my favorites. I think it might have been my fault, because I was thinking to myself one day that I had read so many good books, and I would just love to rant and rant about how horrible a book is. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten something that horrendous. In fact, I've gotten stuff I've forced myself to finish, felt bad about finishing, but didn't want to go crazy ranting about it like I had Mockingbird.

I simply didn't care about any of the characters, which was good considering how many of them popped up and then disappeared. In addition, the last few chapters skip about ten years, and you're expected to understand everything that happened in those ten years. The plot isn't a clear, defined one, much like The Dead Zone; instead it aimlessly wanders around, pausing at times to poke at something that might become sort of a story before the author gets bored with it and throws it away. He even grew bored with the era of the 1930's/40's, so near the end he just skipped a decade per chapter and expected you to know what was going on.

I don't know why I forced myself to finish this. Maybe I thought that it would get better? Whatever the answer is, it didn't get better. There's no plot, just some meandering stories that happen to feature an unlikable protagonist and his interactions with unlikable people. I would give it an F, but then I remind myself of Mockingbird.

Grade: D-

Chomp

Chomp by Carl Hiaasen
Alfred A. Knopf - March 27, 2012
304 pages

Wahoo Cray lives in a zoo. His father is an animal wrangler, so he's grown up with all types of creatures in his backyard. The critters he can handle, but his father is another story.
When his father takes a job for a reality TV show called Expedition Survival!, Wahoo has to do a bit of wrangling to keep his father from killing the star, boneheaded Derek Badger, before the shoot is over. Things keep getting more and more complicated as Derek insists on using wild animals in his stunts. Then there's Wahoo's new shadow Tuna, a girl with an abusive father who needs somewhere to hide out.
It's anyone's guess who will actually survive Expedition Survival!...

I had to cut a paragraph out of that description because it pretty much gives away a chunk of the story due to the type of lousy publicity that Hiaasen has that decides to spill out over half the novel in a 3 1/2 paragraph description.

I love Carl Hiaasen, especially his YA books about the Everglades: Hoot, Flush, and Scat. I've been waiting more than a few years for the next one, and I can tell you that Chomp sufficiently meets my expectations. Instead of being about saving a species, like burrowing owls or Florida panthers, this is about a  broke wildlife wrangler and his son who take a job for a "reality" show to pay off their debt.

In the usual Hiaasen way, Chomp is enough to make you laugh out loud on several occasions and is filled with nearly caricature characters, but it also has elements that I don't remember seeing in previous YA Hiaasen Everglades books: actual suspense and danger where you legitimately worry about the lives of the characters.

Ladies and gentlemen, what can I say? Hail...to...Hiaasen! (If you don't get that reference, brush up on your controversial musicals)

Grade: A

Where'd You Go, Bernadette

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
Little, Brown and Company - August 1, 2012
335 pages

Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she's a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old be, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom.
Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her family reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette's intensifying allergy to Seattle--and people in general--has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic.
To find her mother, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, secret correspondence--creating a compulsively readable and touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter's role in an obscene world.

(Spoiler level: Major in the third paragraph)

Let's start with the news praise: OMG this book is totally hilarious and full of heart with lots of crazy twists and amazing, unforgettable characters and everyone should buy this because it's so totally amazing! A+++ (okay, hopefully no magazine actually said that, but you get everything that's being said about the book)

Now for my praise: The book is completely fast-moving. It's an epistolary novel consisting mostly of emails between Bernadette and her virtual assistant in India as well as Bernadette's nemesis Aubrey Griffin and her friend Soo-Lin Segal. While I don't normally enjoy epistolary novels, I found this one to be quick. There are also little breaks of straight information. Bee and Bernadette are fully-developed characters with dreams, hopes, etc.

And finally my problems: First and foremost, the ending seems completely rushed. Everything was wrapped up way too soon. It especially felt wrong in that Semple makes it sound like everything's going to be okay when the circumstances say that in no real situation it would be okay. If you ran away from home and your husband is the baby daddy of a coworker, things are not going to be okay. Period. End of story. Second, everyone says that this book is hilarious, but there were very few points that I found truly funny. Third, Bee and her friend Kennedy are 15-year-olds in eighth grade. I understand that Bee would be a year behind, because she was born with heart defects that led to multiple surgeries. But Kennedy is totally normal and therefore should be thirteen turning fourteen, not fourteen turning fifteen. There is no explanation as to why she would be a year behind.

In a nutshell: Everyone adores this book. It's fast with a couple of remarkable characters, but the ending feels incomplete, it's not as funny as everyone says, and there's no explanation as to why eighth graders are fifteen.

Grade: B

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux - October 2, 2012
304 pages

Clay Jannon worked at the technological bagel store NewBagel for a few months. Then the recession hit and NewBagel drastically changed its style and became Old Jerusalem Bagels. Now Clay is unemployed and roams the streets of San Francisco when all of a sudden he sees a "Help Wanted" sign for Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. He gets the job and works the night shift. But the store is odd. The books Penumbra carries are arbitrary, although it's nothing popular. And then there's the Waybacklist, full of books printed in a cryptic code. These books are "borrowed" by a variety of strange customers. Clay has to get to the bottom of what is happening here.

This is possibly the geekiest, most hipster-y book that I have ever read. Not that it's a bad thing. In fact, it is very much a good thing for this reviewer. Anything with smart female geeks and bookstores is off to a good start, but when you throw in Swiss typography from the 1500s and a book series within a book about singing dragons, and that excels it to further levels of glee. My one major problem with the novel was of Clay's roommates, Mat and Ashley. Mat's greatest importance is forging one of the logbooks of the bookstore, and Ashley exists for no other purpose than to act like a robot when not making out with Mat. Throw that blonde bimbo out on her head, give Mat something else to do, and this book would have been among the best.

Grade: B+

The Grimm Legacy

The Grimm Legacy by Polly Shulman
Putnam Juvenile - July 8, 2010
325 pages

After writing a paper about the Brothers Grimm for her social studies teacher, Elizabeth is offered a job at the New York Circulating Materials Repository, which is sort of like a library for objects. Inside the repository there is a section known as the Grimm Collection, which is home to objects straight from the fairy tales. The magical objects soon begin to disappear, and so Elizabeth and her newfound friends must go on a quest to find the thief before they become the accused.

Let me begin with the obvious; yes, there is romance in this between the characters. The author intended it to be a twist with which characters ended up with the others, but I saw it a million miles away. In fact, as soon as the main four characters were introduced I knew what was going to happen in terms of love. I had a major issue with Shulman telling as opposed to showing things such as magic and the characters. The ending was thoroughly anticlimactic, and the romance that I was referring to earlier takes up the majority of the last two chapters for no other reason than to go deeper into a relationship that I simply did not care about. The protagonist's voice was that of a whiny teenage girl. She refuses to believe that she's in love because it's not with the guy she expected, and she says that dreams she has where she's with this boy are "nightmares". With a stronger, more independent protagonist at the reins and less "mystery" about the romance, The Grimm Legacy could have been good.

Grade: C

V for Vendetta

V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd

Quality Comics - March 1982 to May 1989
10 issues

In "futuristic" (futuristic at the time, though the event is now in the past) London, the fascist government of Norsefire has control over everyone and has killed all those who were not white, conservative, and straight. London is controlled, until an anarchist named V in a Guy Fawkes mask ignites a revolution when he detonates a bomb in Parliament, setting off fireworks in the shape of a V. A woman named Evey Hammond, who he had saved earlier in the night, watches and comes to help him destroy Norsefire.

How is it that I am reading so many sexist books? Evey Hammond is an extraordinarily passive character, doing next to nothing throughout the course of the graphic novel. The most she does to help V is sit there and gasp when he sets off another one of his bombs. You think that she's becoming a stronger character when she's imprisoned, but it turns out (spoiler alert!)that it was all a trick by V in the first place. She "enjoys" her freedom by becoming the girlfriend of a Scottish gangster and only comes back when V dies. Finally, when V dies, she decides to become the next V, although by now London is already an anarchy, so there's not much she CAN do.(spoiler end) This was ridiculous.

Grade: D