Literary Lollapalooza, June Edition

Summer beach reading season has officially begun, and as the temperatures rise so does the need for a good book to relax with and while away the hours. For you eReaders out there, I discovered the glory of free classic books on googlebooks this month, and the new Kobo eReader launches next month from Borders. If you haven’t caught the eReading fever yet, now may be the time. The Kobo comes pre-loaded with 100 free classic books. WOW! That’s a great deal for book lovers. Plus! For a limited time, download the Borders eStore app to your computer or device and enjoy any one book FOR FREE! Okay, the cross-promotion ends there. This month I didn’t read a whole lot, but what I did read was quality. Dig:

This is Literary Lollapalooza, June 2010 Edition.

Books Read This Month:
The Great Perhaps—Joe Meno
The Hunger Games—¬¬Suzanne Collins
The Angel’s Game—Carlos Zafon-Ruiz
Leviathan—Paul Auster

Books Acquired:

Fiction:

Non-Fiction: Hotel Honolulu by Paul Theroux

E-Books: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, Andersen’s Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen, Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell, The Dubliners by James Joyce, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Grimms’ Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence, Moby Dick by Herman Melville, Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, The Tales of Mother Goose edited by Charles Perrault, Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, and Ulysses by James Joyce…(and this is just a fraction of the free books that you get pre-loaded when you buy your new Kobo eReader!)

Books Borrowed: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Leviathan by Paul Auster

Currently Reading: The Audacity to Win by David Plouffe

Reviews of These Months’ Books:

The Great Perhaps by Joe Meno

Joe Meno is a writer with a unique style. He writes the absurd while remaining completely honest with the emotional world of his characters. He seems to understand that underneath all the trappings of a “normal” life (job, family, prestige, respect, love, and money) there is also a very real emotional world that remains hidden and invisible from us, but that makes us who we are, through and through. It is through his deftly written characters and seemingly innate understanding of this invisible emotional world that he reveals the humanity in all of us.
The Great Perhaps is a tidy little novel of less than 200 pages, but its emotional impact runs much deeper. The story is about an average, normal American family. Both parents are mid-grade scientists: the father studying a long extinct giant squid, the mother a behaviorist studying the strange rapes and mutilations among caged pigeons. The father is prone to seizures when he sees clouds. The mother is afraid her life has become too banal. The two daughters are each rebelling in their own way, one a teenage Marxist with revolution on the brain, and the other is seeking God but finds her self distraught over the conflict between her desires and her intentions.
This is a great novel of normal, everyday unhappiness. A book about how far we don’t reach for our potential everyday of our lives, despite our most fervent prayers and daydreams otherwise. It is a sad malaise into the thoughts and dreams of four very lonely and deeply connected individuals, a.k.a. a family who come out the other side and finds redemption in one another. It is a great tale of a dysfunctional family just like yours, only worse. The magic is that we identify with each of these sad and damaged characters and feel their pain as they experience it, and even greater their elation when the sun breaks through the clouds and they are allowed, if only for a fleeting moment, true contentment and happiness.

Postscript:

I read this book on my Sony eReader, the first full novel so far I have read on my eReader, and I report this: I like it. It is lightweight, portable, and easy to turn on and continue reading at anytime. I never have to search for my place, and I never have to worry about bookmarks, or even finding good stopping points. The eReader always remembers the exact page I was on which makes it easy for quick dispatching when travelling. I also like the fact that I can read while walking (the slim and compact design means no more flopping pages!) I read much of this book on the bus and walking to and from the bus stop and never felt inconvenienced (as I do when reading a print copy) to hurry up and finish or mark my page. My final assessment on eReaders is this: they are great for travel. They are great for readers always on the move. And they are great if you need to carry many volumes at once. Old-schoolers never fear: the written word isn’t going anywhere. As much as I like the convenience of the digital format, nothing will ever replace the smell and crackle of an old book being opened. It’s just like most things in the modern age: I like having options.


The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Again Stephen King touts a book, and I can’t help but listen. Nah, actually, this recommendation came from friends: several; unrelated, and at different times. It didn’t hurt that it became homework for me (as I was asked to create a book club to discuss it), or that once it was published in trade paperback just this month, the top blurb on the back of the book belonged to Mr. King himself. The truth is that this is a modern classic.
True, it is published for the Young Adult teen fiction market, but do not mix this up with your Twilight popcorn flick trash. This is a great modern dystopic novel full of great storytelling, great characters, and tons of action, intrigue and adventure.
Taking place hundreds of years in the future, the world as we know it has crumbled. The remaining area of North America has been reassembled into a place called Panem, made up of different districts distinct mostly by the industry they produce. Our hero is a girl of 17, Katniss Everdeen. Born and raised in District 12, she has been, like most people in the districts, near starving all her life. Because her late father taught her the woods and how to (illegally) hunt game, she has managed to eke out a life for her and her family. Unfortunately, once a year the tyrannical Capitol holds a mandatory competition each year that is to serve as a warning against rebellion: The Hunger Games. Each year a boy and girl are pulled randomly from each district and are forced to fight to the death. From a total 24 the games narrow, bloodily, down to just one child standing: the victor. The games are intense and Katniss has found herself volunteering to participate in order to save her younger sister.
What follows I can only describe as intense action and heartbreaking loss. The amount of death and destruction in this novel makes me wary to suggest to a young teen, but older teens (and adults) will love every minute of this macabre tale. The overlying belief in the human spirit as a redemptive and healing force is a strong reason to pick up this Science Fiction/Fantasy book. Highly encouraged! You will quickly pick up Catching Fire, the second book in the trilogy after finishing this one. The third volume, Mockingjay is out in August. I can’t wait!


The Angel’s Game by Carlos Zafon-Ruiz

As a man who spends his days around books I have long been intrigued by the name Carlos Zafon-Ruiz. It seems he rather sort of appeared out of nowhere, with an incredible list of accolades and two English translations of novels that had been previously published in Spanish, a few years back. The intervening years have done Mr. Zafon-Ruiz well. It seems he has more and more of his works being translated and the two lynchpin works that garnered him notoriety are continual bestsellers in bookstores across the world: The Shadow of the Wind and The Angel’s Game. The Shadow of the Wind precedes Angel’s Game and from many sources I understand it is superior to it, as well.
However, I found myself in possession of an advanced reader’s copy of The Angel’s Game and I couldn’t resist diving right in. Let me tell you: This book is a love letter to books and booklovers everywhere.
The main character, a pulp novelist who dreams of fame, makes a remarkable deal with a shady character to write the book of a lifetime. The following story is part mystery, part supernatural thriller, part fantasy, part romance, part allegory and is one-hundred percent old-fashioned storytelling genius. I hung on every word of this rather dense literary treasure, as if the words I was reading were really those of a long forgotten and mysterious manuscript. The characters are vivid and wholly human in their grandeur and their shortcomings, and the ensuing tale of intrigue is not one I have ever read or seen before. An utterly original and engrossing literary mystery, this one is for all the book lovers out there, this incredible tale of romance and shadows will baffle and inspire you.


Leviathan by Paul Auster

“Six days ago, a man blew himself up by the side of a road in northern Wisconsin.”

So begins Paul Auster's enthralling novel Leviathan, a sprawling, stumbling, tumbling endeavor into the heart of a man. Written in the 1990’s, it seems to foretell a means of expression gone awry, long before it would reach it’s full meaning years later after the New York skyline is missing two undeniable landmarks.
I knew the name Paul Auster from the films Smoke and Blue in the Face long before I got into literature. But his New York trilogy is a bible of sorts that literary hounds seem to howl about.
Leviathan is a novel about digging into the heart and soul of a man; about finding out what exactly makes him tick. And possibly explode.
This novel is told first-person by the writer character thinly veiled as Auster. The story centers on a friend of the author who seems to go off the deep end and becomes someone wholly unrecognizable. The following novel is an exploration into why and where those changes took place, with plenty of soul searching along the way.
The result is a tense character study about people both living and dead, and how we have to salvage pieces of ourselves in order to find meaning in our everyday lives. This is amazingly emotional writing, and Auster clearly directs his love of the United States through an ever-present New York City.
I picked up this book based on a recommendation in EW magazine. I’m very glad I did. This is deep, emotional writing.