gwcoffey's reviews
520 reviews

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

5.0

You know those SNL “Stafon” skits where Bill Hader describes clubs in New York in extravagant ways, saying “It has everything!” Well, this book has everything. It is elegantly written (my version was translated by William Weaver). It is fascinatingly philosophical. It is historical. It is an engrossing mystery story. It is a very funny satire. And it is interesting.

Without spoiling it I’ll say that the resolution of the mystery integrates beautifully with the philosophical themes explored by the characters, and with the setting. The story’s hero, the ultimate villain, the 14th century Church, and the monastery and library each echo one another in fractal ways. It is remarkable how all these parts were assembled to make something cohesive, if labyrinthine.

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

4.0

My brother and I read this book together during a family trip when we were maybe 10 and 11. I had completely forgotten about it until Audible promoted it to me because it is apparently having a birthday. As soon as I saw the title, the memories came flooding back, however unclear.

I remembered my brother reading it on the long car drive. He told me how amazing it was and then loaned his library copy to me when we got to the hotel.

I can’t say I remembered much detail, and much of what I did remember was mixed up (it was an old hotel in my memory, not a new apartment building, for instance). But I did remember a precocious young girl called Turtle, and some kind of elaborate and very tricky scheme. I have to say, to the jaded eyes of a 40-something, the game that drives the plot of the story isn’t nearly so tricky as I thought it was at ten. But it is fun and clever.

In some ways The Westing Game feels like a progenitor of the Lemony Snicket books. The setup is wild, the story absurd, and the adults all behave in a way a child might think adults would behave. It even includes a female judge-hero whose grasp of law is, shall we say, a little fictive. I love how unsentimental the book is. It believes deeply in its characters, and presents them earnestly. It never toys with our emotions. It only seeks to surprise and delight. It all adds up to a charming and funny story.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

4.0

Over dinner, my kid told me they re-read this because their students are reading it in Literature class. Isabel said it was so much better than they remembered. I know we read this in High School, but I’m sure I “read” it in my usual way at the time, which is to say I skimmed the chapters, read the dialog, and hoped for the best. (I didn’t enjoy reading fiction until I was in my late twenties.)

Anyway, long story short I decided it was high time I actually read it for real. It was honestly so much better than I expected. I guess I was naively expecting a lot of puritanical moralizing at the expense of a woman. And in a sense I got that. But Hawthorne also gives us a strong woman, a spirited irrepressible little girl, and a sort of schizophrenic rebuke of the very moralizing he piles on us. It feels surprisingly modern, the way Hawthorne refuses to tell us right and wrong, and I think it contributes to the timelessness of the story. I think a reasonable person could argue all sides here with strong textual support. And so, in the end, almost paradoxically, we find a feminist hero in puritan garb, subjugating her outer life, but not her inner self, to the oppressive morality of her universe.

Somewhat by chance, I’ve been steeped in 70s/80s Gay stories recently. I watched both The Battle of the Sexes and Milk this week, and am about halfway through the audiobook edition of Alysia Abbott’s Fairyland. So bear with me when I stretch authorial intent way past the breaking point and say I almost see a coming out story in The Scarlet Letter. I was really taken by

the contrast between Hester’s life—true to her self and triumphant—and Dimmesdale’s. His inability to live honestly with his own self undermines him. Both these characters participated in the same “sin”, within the same puritanical cultural context. And yet one is free and the other is utterly haunted until he finally comes clean. (Of course he then immediately dies. And I’m not sure what to make of Hester’s ending. But still.)

Anyway, bad interpretations aside, The Scarlet Letter is beautifully and thoughtfully written, thematically complex, and powerful. When I told my mother that I was pleasantly surprised by it, she said “These books are classics for a reason.” Indeed.

Madonna: A Rebel Life by Mary Gabriel

5.0

The book itself is straight forward, even a little boring in structure. It’s a linear telling in six sections, essentially divided by decade. But this isn’t a complaint. Madonna’s story is so compelling that it doesn’t need to be dressed up in a clever telling. Pro-tip: the ebook has an appendix of photographs that is not included with the audiobook. It’s worth seeking them out.

Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father by Alysia Abbott

4.0

I spotted this book on a promo table at a book store in San Francisco and I suppose I was taken in by the striking cover, and because you know, like, I’m a father of girls. I didn’t really know anything about it, but I added it to my list. I’ve just finished listening to the audiobook, well-read by the author.

Abbott is a little older than me, but not much, and so the story of her childhood was striking when compared to my own. The wider geopolitical beats around the story sound familiar, but the lived experience is entirely different. At times I felt so sorry for this little girl who seemed to so desperately need a little more love and attention. And in other places I found myself a little jealous of such an open relationship with such an open father, a man who knew how to express himself clearly. At one point he tells her, in a letter, to be honest. And he uses this evocative line: “Secretiveness = loneliness.” It feels like something I should tattoo on my arm. (I will not…)

Abbott tells her story with skill. You can see, and smell, and taste the world she grew up in. And by using her father’s apparently copious diaries as a source, the memoir is chock-full of details and dialog that gives it currency. I was fully drawn in, rooting for Abbott. As for her father, we know from the start that he is destined to die from complications of AIDS. But I couldn’t help but root for him too. And in a way he triumphs despite his fatal illness. At one point her father writes, “AIDS is neither a curse nor a blessing: it just is.” There’s a zen acceptance here which, by accepting his powerlessness, paradoxically empowers him. It is a moving and uplifting moment in a memoir full of such moments.

Immortal Longings by Chloe Gong

1.0

I saw this book on an NPR list of best books of 2023. The title—a reference to my favorite play by Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra—caught my eye, and I wanted something fun and engaging to listen to on a long car drive. So I bought it on a whim.

This book was not for me.

But Will You Love Me Tomorrow?: An Oral History of the '60s Girl Groups by Emily Sieu Liebowitz, Laura Flam

5.0

This book is almost 100% constructed from excerpts from first person interviews with a wide cast of characters from the industry and era, all meticulously edited to produce a readable, engaging, well-rounded, sometimes contradictory story. It’s a brilliant structure and I can’t imagine how much work went into editing all this together so cleanly. The authors let their subject speak, interjecting only a sentence or two here and there for necessary context. And through this tight scrapbook of excerpts, we see a full story emerge as characters reinforce one another. And we sometimes see them disagree, on interpretation and even on fact. The authors let these disagreements stand without comment. I find this revealing in a way that writing about these people would not be. It is wonderful.

Early on in the book, music exec Renee Pappas makes a point that I found fascinating:

There came a time, right after World War II, where there were Black radio stations to play Black music. But once you had a transistor radio, you could listen to it if Mom and Dad were listening to, I don’t know, whoever… Bing Crosby or somebody. Once transistor radios came into fashion, and kids could have their own music—rather than being tied to whatever the parents had—they started listening to the Black radio stations.

There’s this idea that the transistor radio, more than anything, is responsible for the youth-fueled rapidly evolving trajectory of rock music. In a sense it brought counter-culture into the mainstream primarily because parents could no longer control their children. I like this. This idea that discovery, creativity, and culture-mixing is what kids want, if only stodgy authority figures would get out of the way.

These ’60s girl groups were primarily young black women (often children), so it was no surprise that a strong undercurrent in this whole story is cultural and financial theft. I wish I could say it has a redemptive ending.

But despite that, the voices of these vibrant women come through as clearly in this book as they do in their genre-defining art. While there is darkness here (Murderer, rapist, and sociopath Phil Spector plays a major role for instance) there is also so much joy. These “girls” made music that has been there, in the background pastiche and also literal background, all my life. It was fun and exciting to learn more about them.

Egg: A Dozen Ovatures by Lizzie Stark

4.0

I adore this kind of book. It’s a sort of renaissance work of affection and obsession. Lizzie Stark loves eggs in their manifold forms, and she decided to sit down and tell us why. I suppose you’re wondering if this is a book about eggs-as-biology, or -as-food, or, perhaps, -as-symbol. And the answer to all three is: yes. It’s fun, fast, surprisingly vulnerable, and genuinely interesting.

(I have to add that, frustratingly, the audiobook is marred by several production errors. Repeated lines, small skips, and mispronunciations. The book is wonderful none-the-less.)

The Great White Bard: How to Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race by Farah Karim-Cooper

4.0

I went through a Shakespeare deep dive maybe ten years ago where I read almost every play—I consider myself a fan. So I was instantly interested in this book, which tackles the tricky subject of race and Shakespeare. On the one hand we have the sort of “Shakespeare is perfect and ‘wokeness’ is evil” nutjob crowd. And on the other hand we see serious calls to abandon Shakespeare entirely, which is the kind of response I don’t find very useful. Karim-Cooper, an accomplished Shakespeare scholar and woman of color, does the hard work, turning to the text, and the history of racial language, to engage directly with these divergent viewpoints. She tackles questions of authorial intent, inescapable racist imagery, complex casting challenges, and more.

The Ramona Quimby Audio Collection by Stockard Channing, Beverly Cleary

4.0

My (adult) daughter was on a Ramona audiobook binge. Every time we talked she was telling me this thing or that about Ramona Quimby, and it got me nostalgic for the days when I read these books aloud to my kids. So my wife and I blasted through the whole collection. (Beezus and Ramona is still my favorite of the set, and I’ve read it several times on my own. But I had not read the reast of these since my kids were the right age.)

You don’t need me to tell you Clealry was a genius. I think what I admire most about her work is the love she has for her small simple characters. It is clear on every page that Cleary respects the children she writes about, and she wants us to see all children as intelligent, thoughtful, rational humans deserving of respect from everyone. I could not agree more.