Category Archives: writing

What type of Type is your Type?

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The other day I walked through the bookstore carrying–of all things–a book, and Jack said, “That looks your sort of thing.”

“Eh?”  I responded, blinking.

“That’s your type of book. I saw it when it came in and figured you’d find it before long.”

Gentle reader, I have never before considered that I have a “type of book,” believing myself more the cereal box variety of bibliophile. Granted, I avoid horror, romance and paperbacks bedecked with sword-wielding bikini-clad blonds, but that doesn’t mean I have a “type.” Of type.

Does it?

In the warm light of Jack’s “Sometimes the person on the other side of the bed sees things you don’t” smile, I assessed my reading habits. Gosh darn it, he’s right. Here are five things guaranteed to make me like a book:

1) It features a road trip. I don’t care where they’re going or what they do when they get there; if  the protagonists are driving, flying, walking, or boating across a big space, I’m in. Queen of the Road, The Great Typo Hunt, A Walk Across America, A Walk in the Woods, even The Long Walk (an escape book from the Gulag years). Heck, one of my all-time favorite pieces of music is Brendan’s Voyage, in which Shawn Davey scored the adventures of two modern guys replicating a monk’s coracle voyage from Ireland to Newfoundland. If the main characters are moving, it’s good enough for me.

2) It’s a fictitious story of a child growing up without recognizing what’s going on around her. I love stories that involve children’s innocence protecting them. Trezza Azzopardi’s Remember Me. The Murderer’s Daughters. Girlchild (a bit less innocent, perhaps). But it has to be fiction; A Child Called It left me cold. Sure, a psychiatrist could help me understand why, but I’ll stick with enjoying the never-ending stream of fiction traffic clogging dysfunction junction.

3) It’s a true story of simple living told with humor. Sweaterwise: My Year of Knitting Dangerously. The $64 Tomato. Farewell, My Subaru.  How Many Hills to Hillsboro. Mud Season. Heart in the Right Place. American Shaolin (although that’s maybe not so simple; the guy moved to Asia and enrolled in a monastery). One can get tired of yuppies run amok among the greener grasses on the fence’s other side, total life changes, or even strange gimmicky publicity stunts akin to reality television for the memoir market. (How low can one go to get a book deal? Don’t answer that.) The “at home” memoirs still delight me.

4) Any book with that gilt foil paint stuff on its cover. The Rose of Sebastopol wasn’t a favorite, but I read it because of its gilt flower frame. The Reluctant Fundamentalist sported foil letters. I even enjoy The Royal Diaries series for girls. Put gold on the cover, and you had me at hello.

This makes me shallow, right? I accept that.

5) Historic fiction with strong female leads. Yes, Philippa Gregory has a lot to answer for; I don’t even like the way Robin Maxwell writes; but if it’s about an ordinary woman caught in extraordinary times (Tudor dynasty, Spanish Diaspora, Druidic and Christian worldviews clashing) color me there. Caveat: the books in this camp range from brain bubblegum to intensely well-researched dissertations-as-narrative; choose wisely. I did once throw Katie Hickman across the room in exasperation.

So now you know: left to my own devices, these are the books I gravitate toward. What’s your type of type?

The Monday Book: The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Mohsin Hamid

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You know that moment when you pick up a book, read a page, and feel the thrill of discovery? “I’ve got a live one here!”

The Reluctant Fundamentalist came into the bookstore in some bag or box, and because it was close to Christmas we were slower than usual triaging the collection for shelving. Jack and I agreed to close the store Christmas Eve Day and flee our responsibilities for an extended holiday, and as part of a last-minute packing job that covered twenty minutes from bag to door, I snatched Fundamentalist off the top of a pile as a “this looks good enough” book during our three days at the cabin.

The cabin is a deliberately isolated place, no phone, no Internet, no TV, in consequence of which we usually bring a book for each day. It was on day two, just after the morning news had ended on the radio, that I opened Hamid’s novel and began reading.

And reading. And savoring, and laughing, and drawing in a sharp breath, and diving headlong into a scary world of subtly-drawn tensions, coiled tight and ready to spring.

Hamid’s novel is about a Princeton graduate (Changez, and if one is prone to find meaning in character names, yes, it sounds like what he goes through) and Lahore native–a city of about 8 million, basically the NYC of Pakistan–who hits the good life in America at age 22, working high finance for a big investment firm. Think guys who do unspeakable things with computers that result in lots of money for a few, big bad changes for the rest.

But Changez begins to come unglued because of a few key forces. Chief among these is his tormented girlfriend, who as the novel progresses becomes a symbol of the two cities that dominate the book, Lahore and NYC; she cannot move past her own losses, and sinks into herself, a self-indulgent poor little rich girl incapable of coping with what’s happened to her. Did I mention the book is also about 9/11? At the same time, Erica (the girlfriend) could be Lahore, a city of ancient splendor reduced to the pale shadow of its former self, wasting with quiet dignity away into nostalgia for a life no longer possible.

Behind this love story going so sweetly, poetically, horribly bad is the tense political thriller of two men seated at a restaurant. The entire story is in fact Changez’s monologue to an unidentified American. The reader never hears the other man’s voice, but hints and innuendos undergirding the developing relationship mirror what’s happening inside Changez in his narrated biography.

Hamid writes with the delicacy of a world-class figure skater on thin ice, executing moves a lesser artist would fear to try on solid ground. At one point, as the Towers fall, a character, alone in his hotel room, smiles. That’s all; he just smiles, but the book pivots on this like a 200-pound muscle man who becomes poetry in motion, expressing things people just don’t say out loud. Ever.

It’s not a book everyone will like; it asks too many questions, suggests too many ambiguities. The very nature of its lady-or-the-tiger ending will bring some readers to their feet, shrieking in protest (sorry, very small spoiler there). But it is awesome, in the sense of inspiring something between fear and admiration for its unflinching, brutal understatement.