Runner-Up) Under the Dome by Stephen King
In what could be King’s most epic tale next to the Gunslinger Roland and The Stand, he returns to his small town Maine roots to concoct a story that is frightening in its simplicity and even more frightening in its scope. Here the BIG BAD isn’t some supernatural or other-worldly baddy, but plain and simple human greed and powerlust. The results are astoundingly political and frighteningly close to home.
Runner-Up) God is Dead by Ron Currie, Jr.
Ron Currie’s deliciously dark collection of post-God tales is uneven but there are a few stories here that put this book into near perfection. Don’t let the pseudo-religious (or anti-religious) overtones turn you off from this fascinating book. The author isn’t trying to take any sort of stance on God one way or the other. His is more a philosophical question: How can a society built on the belief, trust and faith in God continue on as normal when it knows for a fact that God has ceased to exist? The results are frightening, touching, funny and at a couple of points I literally had to catch my breath and hold back the tears. A powerful imagination at work.
10) The Boy Detective Fails by Joe Meno
The Boy Detective Fails is deceptively simple. It is merely a story about a boy detective (much like an Encyclopedia Brown) who grows up to find he lives in a world in which he doesn’t fit in and which he fails to understand. Just the act of taking such an archetypal character and placing it in the context of the real world is genius enough. To make it work on all levels at once makes it extraordinary. Meno makes us all rethink what our childhood mystery solving geniuses might be like if they worked in the cubicle next to ours. And what REALLY puts this over the top for me is the amount of fun the author and publisher has included for the reader in terms of interactive games and activities. The casual reader is really only cheating him/herself if they don’t play along and cut out the decoder ring that is included on the back cover flap. You get to decipher clues right along with the Boy Detective himself! And at the end of the book Meno and Co. supply a maze and a recipe for pound cake. Now that’s fun reading!
9) If on a winter’s night a traveler…by Italo Calvino
Calvino pulls off a jewel-heist of a novel here by substituting what should be a novel with ten different “starts” to ten different novels, connected by a wrap-around story about a reader (maybe even yourself) who starts a book called “If on a winter’s night a traveler…” only to find that it stops abruptly just as its getting good. He goes off in search of an ending and instead finds a conspiracy of book anarchists and book publishers more interested in finding a computer program that can write books in the style of popular authors than in actual works of art. The trick is that instead of being annoying or aggravating, Calvino pulls it off.
8) Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
Ferris’ debut novel is a satiric gem. At face value, a comedy about working in an office, it delivers on multiple levels: funny, adroit, tense and emotional; this is a juggernaut of a read that takes on a mind of its own. The characters are well-drawn and the writing is as honest and loving as it comes. A warm hug of a read, this one promises us that we are all in this together.
7) A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
Eggers’ self-aggrandizing title was almost enough to turn me off of this autobiography. But unfortunately the guy got it just about right. This semi-autobiographical tale about losing his mother to cancer and his having to raise his 12 year old brother in his twenties is just what it advertises. It is heartbreaking. If you have ever lost someone close to you, particularly a parent, and especially if it was a long and grueling sickness will want desperately to check out of this all-too-harrowing account of cancer’s effects, but will find it impossible to put down. Once you’re past the death, however, is when Eggers flips the switch and pulls off one of the most difficult and wildly irrational autobiographies ever written, making the term “genius” not so out of place. Included are conversations with himself as author of his own story, but told via the voice of his little brother, accusing him(self) of trying to steal focus by writing about himself as a martyr. The genius: it may be true. But then again, who knows…maybe he was simply trying to tell a story. You can debate where truth and honesty begin and end in this amazing debut for years to come.
6) Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Tower Wells
This is a collection of short stories about real people living simple (yet complicated) lives. They are vignettes from a dozen different lives. Nothing special, nothing outrageous, just daily slights and revenges. Think Raymond Carver but with a North Carolina twang. Tower Wells’ debut collection is the announcement of a major voice on the literary scene. His writing is effortless and rings true 100% of the time. His lyrical prose is pleasant to read and makes an afternoon in a comfortable chair feel absolutely timeless.
5) The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
This book intended for the 12-14 year old set boggled my mind. It is so brilliantly plotted and the characters and themes are so very advanced that I found it hard to imagine myself as a 12-year-old grasping the complexities of this story. Would I have enjoyed it? Without a doubt. As an adult I get to enjoy it and get it. Honestly the best book about a child raised by the denizens of a graveyard that you’ll read this year. Okay, ever.
4) The Millenium Series by Steig Larsson
Okay so this is three books, not one, but they read like one very big book. Steig Larsson would have been HUGE if he had lived. As it is, he died prematurely, before even the first book of the trilogy was published in the States. Imagine for a moment, an author so profoundly talented that he has a complete trilogy of novels delivered to his publisher, fast-tracked to production before the first of the three is even published. And then he dies. And then the first book is a phenomenon.
It lives up to the hype! The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is hands down one of the best books I’ve ever read. And each book continuing in the series picks up immediately where the last left off. Not a day passes from the end of one to the beginning of the next. So far The Girl Who Played with Fire is only available in the States in hardback. I think The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is due out in hardback in the States in May. I loved this series so much I went ahead and ordered the third book in the series from Amazon.uk. It cost a little more, but it was totally worth it. This is the best mystery/thriller series of the decade!
3) City of Thieves by David Benioff
This is the easiest recommendation I can make this year. Period. It started off as homework, and ended up being one of the most fun books I’ve ever read. This is golden writing. Screenwriter Benioff is an amazingly visual author and the characters fill a very real space inside your head. This is a fun beach read disguised as intellectual fodder. An amazing coming-of-age tale that combines drama, humor, and heart-thumping adventure, this book is easily the most universally pleasing of anything I read this year. This book will leave you smiling. ‘Nuff said.
2) The Terror by Dan Simmons
I have never been as lost in a written world as I was within Dan Simmons’ 18th century frozen wasteland that is the Antarctic. This is seriously the best historical fiction I have ever read. It is also one of the most suspenseful and terrifying novels I have ever read. Simmons is a true master. I can’t even begin to describe how fully he envelopes the reader into the world of an ice-bound ship and it’s terrified and starving crew. The terrors that follow in this masterpiece are both real and imaginary, and are all too often the work of human hands. When he masterfully brings his harrowing tale to an end, you will be both sad and relieved. An amazing story teller.
1) Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
This is a profoundly personal story about a great and proud man who finds himself in the position to be a hero and then finds himself the victim of incredible injustice.
Zeitoun is a biography that will leave you yearning for more. The writing here is so clear, so warm, so focused on the details that this comes across as a step-by-step account of how to be heroic. Until, that is, things go terribly, horribly wrong. And then when the facts come clear, the reader is filled with such absolute disgust and loathing that it is hard to continue reading. But faith pushes us on, because we’ve all been taught that good deeds get rewarded. The story of Zeitoun will make you WANT to be a better person. And that’s more important than anything else this can hope to accomplish. But the amazing thing about this tale is that it feels good to read it. Sure you may snarl from time to time, but this is some uplifting real-life shit, right here.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Friday, January 1, 2010
Literary Lollapalooza, December Edition
This month I complete an entire year of monthly book reviews. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, I have made it through the entire year without missing (completely) a month. It’s December and that means that this year ends and we welcome a new year to come. This is how I spent my December reading…
This is Literary Lollapalooza, December Edition.
Books Acquired:
Fiction: House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall, Alive in Necropolis by Doug Dorst, Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff, The Ecco Anthology of Contemporary American Short Fiction selected by Joyce Carol Oates and Christopher R. Beha, and The Art of the Tale: An International Anthology of Short Stories edited by Daniel Halpern
Non-Fiction: Ripped by Greg Kot, Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street by Michael Davis, Drunkard: A Hard Drinking Life by Neil Steinberg, The Stanislavski System by Sonia Moore, and Funny Misshapen Body by Jeffrey Brown
E-Books:
Books Borrowed:
Currently Reading: House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, McSweeney’s Mammoth Book of Thrilling Tales edited by Michael Chabon
Books Read This Month: God is Dead by Ron Currie, Jr., The Law of Nines by Terry Goodkind, Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
Reviews of This Month’s Books:
God is Dead by Ron Currie, Jr.
God is Dead is not as depressing as it sounds. Wait. Strike that. God is Dead is not ALWAYS as depressing as it sounds. In fact, at times it is blisteringly funny. What could be funnier than Colin Powell talking shit in his best Samuel L. Jackson voice? God has died and the world has crumbled into chaos.
Wait…that’s not funny. Except that it is. In Currie’s exceptional first novel he displays a knack for the absurd that rivals Vonnegut. God is Dead is not so much a novel as it is a collection of short stories based around a theme. The theme: God comes to Earth in the form of a woman, raped and beaten to near death in Darfur. God dies alone and lonely in a God-forsaken land. What follows is at turns a hilarious satire, a gut-wrenching exploration of loss of life and the loss of faith, and a vision of what happens when the world falls apart and is then rebuilt, by people too damaged to make good decisions.
Each chapter is really a different short story. Each one takes a different character as its protagonist, and each story takes place at different points along the timeline. One story may take place before God has died, or even concurrently, others happen after God has died and reason no longer holds sway. But some of the most twisted tales take place in a post-God future, post-chaos, where man has rebuilt the world so that parents are forced to attend therapy sessions to remind them of how unremarkable their children are.
This is extraordinary writing. And the imagination on display here is something truly exciting to see in a young writer. The worst thing I can say about this is that it is uneven to say the least. The quality of the stories collected that are collected here is uneven to say the least. For instance, the first story, in which we learn that Secretary of State Colin Powell is tired of being Bush’s bitch and is ready to make a big bold move, is hilarious and as close to South Park cartoonism as you can get. But there is a chapter/story involving a high school graduate who encounters terror at the height of her innocence and possibility that is absolutely staggering in its death-defying, high-wire tension. And another story about a group of college buddies that begin to stand around the kitchen shooting one another because it breaks up the boredom of drinking themselves to death, leaves one gasping for a little warmth. However, there are times when you feel Currie has taken his theme to extremes, begging to be taken seriously when they are laughable and ludicrous.
Lastly, every dog of this very short collection is worth the absolutely dizzying heights that some of the stories reach. This is fearless writing, and some of these stories are breath-taking in their horror and heartbreak. Overall, a fittingly chaotic tome of what may happen if God did, in fact, come to Earth and die.
This one is MUST reading for those few stories that took my breath away. If you aren’t interested, but still want to have your world drop beneath your feet, let me know and I’ll mail you photocopies of the best stories. As a friend, I owe you as much.
The Law of Nines by Terry Goodkind
I picked this up as an ARC (advance reader copy) in the back room at Borders because I thought it looked interesting. I knew that Goodkind was a respected author of Fantasy novels, and while I’m not really a fan of that genre, this promised to be more sci-fi than fantasy, based on its slick contemporary marketing and its “real world meets another world” plot.
After reading such ground-jarring fiction as I just had (see above), I needed a diversion. This seemed to fit the bill. Also at this time I experienced a bit of a life change when I swapped jobs between my full-time and part-time jobs. After a year or more of having Borders as my day job, with a built-in hour lunch break everyday which guaranteed good reading time I switched it for a full-time gig with the Studio Theatre which has prime hours, but I lose my hour of reading time in exchange for an on-the-clock break in which I eat as quick as I can and get back to business. Thus, I have much less reading time built into my day, which explains why it took almost the entire month for me to finish this 500 page novel.
That, and the fact that it is quite simply, poorly written. The truth is that while the story is good and the characters are likable, this is piss poor writing. The prose is clunky and clumsy. I spent so much of the novel rereading what I already knew that I wanted to send a letter to Mr. Goodkind containing only the definition of the word “redundant”. I can’t tell you how many times I read how uncomfortable the main character felt because he felt uncomfortable about being uncertain. I just at times wanted to scream, “STOP SAYING THE SAME THING THREE TIMES IN A ROW!” Look, I get why the character doesn’t trust mirrors. You needn’t explain it every single time you bring it up.
Now, of course, I’m being overly harsh. I did enjoy this novel. I completed it and even took great pleasure in completing it. However, I doubt that I will ever read another book by this author. And while I enjoyed the journey, it was so filled with cliché and predictable moments, that I do not feel any need to read anything else involving this world or these characters. A sad state of affairs as there are two other “Nines” novels in the works.
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
Then We Came to the End should have been a simple, funny and forgettable “work novel”. By all description it comes as across as “a bunch of funny things that happen to us and our co-workers while we are at the office” type of book. Something that we can read, and nod, and chuckle because we recognize ourselves, and isn’t it so true? This book manages to be THAT book and then blows your mind because it becomes so much more. Forgettable? Hardly.
The story follows the working lives of a bunch of advertising copywriters and graphic designers, from the heady days of excess when everyone was padding their retirement portfolios, into the harsh reality of an economic downturn when the question is not will I get laid off, but when? Following the inter-office exploits of these discontented cubicle workers as they struggle to keep their jobs in a terrifyingly competitive advertising firm, it is at turns hilarious, heartbreaking, and even shockingly suspenseful.
In Ferris’ debut novel, he takes the banal and derivative idea of the office novel and infuses it with warmth, life, anger, regret and a solid emotional heart. Then We Came to the End is as big and bold a debut novel as you can expect to read. Written in the “corporate we” the story doesn’t have a single protagonist but a group of protagonists that function as a team, even when they want to tear each other’s throats out. It is a rambling tale that feels like an office gossip story, full of tangential rants and amusing sidebars, somehow circling back around to the story at hand. It is venomous in its honesty about inter-office relationships: the way that we hate the tics and foibles of our coworkers (those stupid jokes, that awful hairdo, the foul body odor) as well as the acknowledgment that teamwork unites (as well as creates resentments). Like life, it is messy and complicated, and funny and terrible, and despairing and hopeful. In the end we look back with fondness, recalling the good times we shared and the people we never see anymore and hardly ever even think about.
Then We Came to the End is a big, sprawling, warm-hearted and touching comic satire. And the recent financial crisis makes this tale (from 2007) all the more relevant. And then check out the interactive and fully-integrated website set up by the publisher (it even includes a floorplan which highlights the person’s name when you mouse over their office.) Just Google the title you’ll find it. Fun stuff indeed!
And then we came to the end. Of the year. Wow, how time flies! I’ve read a great many different things this year, and next up I’ll decide the 10 best things I’ve read all year. And in January I’ll kick off a whole new year of reading.
Stay tuned and keep reading!
God is
This is Literary Lollapalooza, December Edition.
Books Acquired:
Fiction: House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall, Alive in Necropolis by Doug Dorst, Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff, The Ecco Anthology of Contemporary American Short Fiction selected by Joyce Carol Oates and Christopher R. Beha, and The Art of the Tale: An International Anthology of Short Stories edited by Daniel Halpern
Non-Fiction: Ripped by Greg Kot, Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street by Michael Davis, Drunkard: A Hard Drinking Life by Neil Steinberg, The Stanislavski System by Sonia Moore, and Funny Misshapen Body by Jeffrey Brown
E-Books:
Books Borrowed:
Currently Reading: House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, McSweeney’s Mammoth Book of Thrilling Tales edited by Michael Chabon
Books Read This Month: God is Dead by Ron Currie, Jr., The Law of Nines by Terry Goodkind, Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
Reviews of This Month’s Books:
God is Dead by Ron Currie, Jr.
God is Dead is not as depressing as it sounds. Wait. Strike that. God is Dead is not ALWAYS as depressing as it sounds. In fact, at times it is blisteringly funny. What could be funnier than Colin Powell talking shit in his best Samuel L. Jackson voice? God has died and the world has crumbled into chaos.
Wait…that’s not funny. Except that it is. In Currie’s exceptional first novel he displays a knack for the absurd that rivals Vonnegut. God is Dead is not so much a novel as it is a collection of short stories based around a theme. The theme: God comes to Earth in the form of a woman, raped and beaten to near death in Darfur. God dies alone and lonely in a God-forsaken land. What follows is at turns a hilarious satire, a gut-wrenching exploration of loss of life and the loss of faith, and a vision of what happens when the world falls apart and is then rebuilt, by people too damaged to make good decisions.
Each chapter is really a different short story. Each one takes a different character as its protagonist, and each story takes place at different points along the timeline. One story may take place before God has died, or even concurrently, others happen after God has died and reason no longer holds sway. But some of the most twisted tales take place in a post-God future, post-chaos, where man has rebuilt the world so that parents are forced to attend therapy sessions to remind them of how unremarkable their children are.
This is extraordinary writing. And the imagination on display here is something truly exciting to see in a young writer. The worst thing I can say about this is that it is uneven to say the least. The quality of the stories collected that are collected here is uneven to say the least. For instance, the first story, in which we learn that Secretary of State Colin Powell is tired of being Bush’s bitch and is ready to make a big bold move, is hilarious and as close to South Park cartoonism as you can get. But there is a chapter/story involving a high school graduate who encounters terror at the height of her innocence and possibility that is absolutely staggering in its death-defying, high-wire tension. And another story about a group of college buddies that begin to stand around the kitchen shooting one another because it breaks up the boredom of drinking themselves to death, leaves one gasping for a little warmth. However, there are times when you feel Currie has taken his theme to extremes, begging to be taken seriously when they are laughable and ludicrous.
Lastly, every dog of this very short collection is worth the absolutely dizzying heights that some of the stories reach. This is fearless writing, and some of these stories are breath-taking in their horror and heartbreak. Overall, a fittingly chaotic tome of what may happen if God did, in fact, come to Earth and die.
This one is MUST reading for those few stories that took my breath away. If you aren’t interested, but still want to have your world drop beneath your feet, let me know and I’ll mail you photocopies of the best stories. As a friend, I owe you as much.
The Law of Nines by Terry Goodkind
I picked this up as an ARC (advance reader copy) in the back room at Borders because I thought it looked interesting. I knew that Goodkind was a respected author of Fantasy novels, and while I’m not really a fan of that genre, this promised to be more sci-fi than fantasy, based on its slick contemporary marketing and its “real world meets another world” plot.
After reading such ground-jarring fiction as I just had (see above), I needed a diversion. This seemed to fit the bill. Also at this time I experienced a bit of a life change when I swapped jobs between my full-time and part-time jobs. After a year or more of having Borders as my day job, with a built-in hour lunch break everyday which guaranteed good reading time I switched it for a full-time gig with the Studio Theatre which has prime hours, but I lose my hour of reading time in exchange for an on-the-clock break in which I eat as quick as I can and get back to business. Thus, I have much less reading time built into my day, which explains why it took almost the entire month for me to finish this 500 page novel.
That, and the fact that it is quite simply, poorly written. The truth is that while the story is good and the characters are likable, this is piss poor writing. The prose is clunky and clumsy. I spent so much of the novel rereading what I already knew that I wanted to send a letter to Mr. Goodkind containing only the definition of the word “redundant”. I can’t tell you how many times I read how uncomfortable the main character felt because he felt uncomfortable about being uncertain. I just at times wanted to scream, “STOP SAYING THE SAME THING THREE TIMES IN A ROW!” Look, I get why the character doesn’t trust mirrors. You needn’t explain it every single time you bring it up.
Now, of course, I’m being overly harsh. I did enjoy this novel. I completed it and even took great pleasure in completing it. However, I doubt that I will ever read another book by this author. And while I enjoyed the journey, it was so filled with cliché and predictable moments, that I do not feel any need to read anything else involving this world or these characters. A sad state of affairs as there are two other “Nines” novels in the works.
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
Then We Came to the End should have been a simple, funny and forgettable “work novel”. By all description it comes as across as “a bunch of funny things that happen to us and our co-workers while we are at the office” type of book. Something that we can read, and nod, and chuckle because we recognize ourselves, and isn’t it so true? This book manages to be THAT book and then blows your mind because it becomes so much more. Forgettable? Hardly.
The story follows the working lives of a bunch of advertising copywriters and graphic designers, from the heady days of excess when everyone was padding their retirement portfolios, into the harsh reality of an economic downturn when the question is not will I get laid off, but when? Following the inter-office exploits of these discontented cubicle workers as they struggle to keep their jobs in a terrifyingly competitive advertising firm, it is at turns hilarious, heartbreaking, and even shockingly suspenseful.
In Ferris’ debut novel, he takes the banal and derivative idea of the office novel and infuses it with warmth, life, anger, regret and a solid emotional heart. Then We Came to the End is as big and bold a debut novel as you can expect to read. Written in the “corporate we” the story doesn’t have a single protagonist but a group of protagonists that function as a team, even when they want to tear each other’s throats out. It is a rambling tale that feels like an office gossip story, full of tangential rants and amusing sidebars, somehow circling back around to the story at hand. It is venomous in its honesty about inter-office relationships: the way that we hate the tics and foibles of our coworkers (those stupid jokes, that awful hairdo, the foul body odor) as well as the acknowledgment that teamwork unites (as well as creates resentments). Like life, it is messy and complicated, and funny and terrible, and despairing and hopeful. In the end we look back with fondness, recalling the good times we shared and the people we never see anymore and hardly ever even think about.
Then We Came to the End is a big, sprawling, warm-hearted and touching comic satire. And the recent financial crisis makes this tale (from 2007) all the more relevant. And then check out the interactive and fully-integrated website set up by the publisher (it even includes a floorplan which highlights the person’s name when you mouse over their office.) Just Google the title you’ll find it. Fun stuff indeed!
And then we came to the end. Of the year. Wow, how time flies! I’ve read a great many different things this year, and next up I’ll decide the 10 best things I’ve read all year. And in January I’ll kick off a whole new year of reading.
Stay tuned and keep reading!
God is
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