Wilson's Weblog

by Jeffrey Eugenides, 2011, Farrer, Straus, and Giroux, New York

After reading Middlesex and giving it a “5-Star” rating, I was really disappointed in this book.  Eugenides brings the same great writing style to this book, but the subject matter is much less compelling.  It’s about three Brown students, two males and a female, who struggle to find themselves and their relationships, both prior to graduation and after.

There are a couple of problems with the book.  The first is that none of the three individuals were particularly interesting to me.  One of the males is enmeshed in his own depression, the other in religious studies.  The female, on the other hand, seems terribly wrapped up in herself and her love for the depressed male.  What happens to these three in the book seems overly drawn out.  The plot thickens, but to the point where the reader seems stuck in molasses!

One other thing I didn’t like about the book was, in spite of being a Brown graduate myself, the references to the Brown campus and surroundings in the first part of the book seemed way overdone.  I could relate to having coffee in the Blue Room at Faunce House and all the other spots on campus (need I mention the Ratty?), but I felt it was at the expense of being a decent book.  Anyone who had never set foot on the Brown campus would probably not care about all these place names.

In addition to all the Brown references, the first part of the book is loaded with other arcane references to literarary and cultural individuals that I had never heard of (nor have much interest in ever learning about).  I often got the feeling that Eugenides was name dropping and just showing off.  Come on Jeff, enough is enough!

Well, what is good about this book?  Eugenides writes incredibly well.  His sentences and paragraphs just fly along and each one invites the reader to read on to the next one.  The old saying goes that easy reading is the result of very hard writing.  I, as the reader, can almost feel the effort put forth by this writer as I fly through his prose.

Unfortunately, when I finished Middlesex, I felt that I should have read it more slowly to savor it; in the case of The Marriage Plot, I felt that I should have read it even faster to be done with it!  

by William R. Forstchen, 2009, A Tom Doherty Associates Book, New York

This book is about a nuclear detonation and the effects of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that emanated from that detonation. It is clear from this book that the impact of such an explosion would be far more devastating than the actual explosion or the subsequent radioactive fallout.  This book present the case of what would happen in stark detail.  The book is set in a small town in North Carolina and focuses on the inhabitants’ struggle to survive in a world without electricity or any of the other electronics that we depend upon in our society.

While the book makes a compelling case that something should be done to harden our defenses against such an attack, it also was not a great read.  The story focuses on one individual in the town and how the situation affects him and his family.  I would have preferred a more exciting portrayal of what happened in this very altered situation.