The First Bad Man by Miranda July

I love Miranda July.  I hate Miranda July.  I was totally amused by her collection It Chooses You a few years back.  I was drawn to her new novel, The First Bad Man, like a car wreck that I knew I probably didn't want to see but couldn't look away from.  Mostly, I admire Miranda July.  She puts it out there a little bit like Lena Dunham, another brash, young artistic voice I can't entirely ignore.  And I didn't hate this book as much as I thought I might.

The title comes from the role of "the first bad man" attacker in the self-defense videos produced by the non-profit that Cheryl, the protagonist, works for.  Cheryl lives alone, is infatuated with a creepy board member named Philip and obsessed with the connection she felt with a baby she met when she was six that she named Kubelko Bondy.  When her boss asks if her 26 year old daughter, Clee, can move in with Cheryl temporarily, the book becomes sexually charged and borderline surreal.  In her review of the book, Lena Dunham wrote, "Miranda July's ability to pervert norms while embracing what makes us normal is astounding".

I almost stopped reading this book.  When I saw where it was headed, I wanted to stop looking through the keyhole at bizarro-world.  But the New York Times review of the book had already cautioned me that "challenging work tends to incite readerly resistance".  I stayed with it until the end, shaking my head but a little in awe of the risky freshness that July makes her readers confront.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

I love to pick a book to read by the light the Christmas tree on my iPad during the holidays, and this year I was intrigued by all of the accolades All the Light We Cannot See was receiving - finalist for the National Book Award, New York Times #1 bestseller, Indie Next Pick and the list goes on.  I had read enough to know it is a WWII story of a young boy and a young girl who are united by the power of radio.  Historic fiction isn't at the top of my lists of reading interests, but after reading a little bit about Anthony Doerr and discovering that he grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, I knew I had to read this book.  Doerr's prose is beautiful poetry!  He weaves a compelling connection between his alternate narrators - Marie-Laure who lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History and a German orphan named Werner who is snatched up by Hitler's Youth for his aptitude for science.  Although the book is very long - 544 pages - the chapters are relatively short and the jumping back and forth between narrators and time periods make it an unbelievably quick book.  I was fully satisfied by the novel and it was the rare sort that made me interested in doing more research into the ancient walled city of Saint Malo, the seizure of French art during the German invasion and the history of radio.  Doerr explains his various inspirations for the novel in this short video.