On Such a Full Sea

I've never read anything by Chang-Rae Lee before, but this book was highly-rated and looked interesting, so I got the ebook from the library. After having read the book, I'm honestly still not quite sure what I think about it.

The novel is set in a distant future where everyone either lives in "facilities," "charters," or "open counties." The facilities are specialized highly-regimented (but not horrible) working towns that provide high-end goods for the lucky wealthy who live in the charters. The open counties are wild areas where the government has pretty much given up and you pretty much take your life in your hands. The story focuses on Fan, a young woman who raises fish in the B-Mor facility, which was once Baltimore, and her boyfriend Reg, who raises plants there. When Reg suddenly disappears, Fan leaves the safety of B-Mor to take her chances in the counties, hoping to find him.

Lee does a wonderfully detailed job creating his future world, and he uses an odd technique of having the story told by a nameless, faceless, but still interested third party, almost like a descendant of Fan's passing on a piece of family lore to the next generation (which makes for an interesting experience for the reader, because the narrator tells a lot of things that he doesn't actually witness). But the characters were disappointingly one-dimensional to me, and I never really felt a connection with Fan (and Reg was totally flat).

I have a sense that there is something larger here, that I need to think more about the story before forming my final opinion. There are a lot of layers, and different ways of reading things. This was definitely one of the most intriguing novels I've read in a while, and that's certainly worth something.


On Such a Full Sea

Where Nobody Knows Your Name

This is John Feinstein's latest book, and it's a must-read if you're a baseball fan(atic). Feinstein basically spends one season in the Triple-A International League, chronicling the highs and lows of life as a player, manager, and umpire in the highest of the minor leagues of baseball.

This is one of those books that I kept marking passages in to read to my husband. Feinstein is a great storyteller who is given a lot of access, and he uses that combination to share some funny, amazing, and heart-wrenching real stories about people both whom you've heard of and of whom you will never hear. He focuses mostly on 3 or 4 teams and a dozen or so people who are either on their way up or on their way down (that's pretty much the way it is in AAA, nobody wants to stay there). But he also shares great stories of baseball lore, like what Tommy Lasorda had to say about Bobby Valentine when he managed him in the Dodgers farm system (the book is worth the read for that story alone).

I learned a lot of things from the book that I didn't know about all the movement in baseball if you're not a "hot prospect" or signed to a multiyear  contract, and read some really great baseball stories. I highly recommend this book for any fan of the game.

Where Nobody Knows Your Name

TWO Books I just read!

So I just got back from Las Vegas, and in the course of my travels I read two novels. The first, That Part Was True by Deborah McKinlay, I finished on the plane ride there. The second, The Ashford Affair by Lauren Willig, I started before I left and finished on the way home. Both books were great, different, but very enjoyable.

That Part Was True is the story of a correspondence that grows to be a friendship, between two people who don't actually meet during the course of the story. Jackson Cooper is a novelist living in the Hamptons, and Eve Petworth is a lonely, well-off British woman living in the English countryside. Eve enjoys one of Jack's novels so much that she decides to write him a letter, and so begins a correspondence that turns into a deep and caring friendship. I really like these characters, and their interactions through snail-mail and e-mail are interesting and engaging. This is just a really sweet book, and the end is just lovely.

The Ashford Affair is two connected stories in different times and places. In the early 20th century, Addie Gillecote is orphaned and goes to live with her aunt and uncle and cousins, and she and cousin Bea develop a special friendship. At the turn of the 21st century, Clementine Evans' Granny Addie dies at the age of 99, and a family secret finally comes to light. Alternating between Addie's point of view in the past, and Clemmie's point of view in the present, Willig presents an intriguing story of love, betrayal, and what it means to be family. This was a real page-turner.

That Part Was True

The Ashford Affair