Sickboy's Literary Lollapalooza, August 2010

With this one, I can get caught up, and try to keep current from here on out. It was a decent month of reading, 8 books, but three were read in one week while sitting on a boat in the middle of the ocean. So, I don’t guess it’s normal for me to read this many at a time. Again, books denoted with “*” are Pulitzer Winners. August brought with it a trilogy, some rewritten history, and a Pulitzer Winner. Enjoy this latest edition of Literary Lollapalooza…

BOOKS ACQUIRED AUGUST 2010

The Girl Who Played With Fire, Stieg Larsson

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Stieg Larsson

To Kill A Mockingbird*, Harper Lee

My Life as An Experiment, A.J. Jacobs

Interpreter of Maladies*, Jhumpa Lahiri

Tinkers* Paul Harding

Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist, Michael J. Fox

BOOKS READ AUGUST 2010

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson: I’m going to start by saying this is not the type of book I would normally read. But every time I walked into a bookstore, I couldn’t help but be beat over the head with this book, and the two that follow it. So, I thought I’d see what the hubbub was all about. I’m pretty glad I did. This, the first book in the trilogy, started slow, but I liked where it was going, so I pushed forward. By the time I was somewhere short of halfway through it, it started moving quickly, and I didn’t want to put it down. Lisbeth Salander, the main female character, is a delightfully anti-social hacker with a severe mistrust of everyone she meets. Salander is hired by Mikael Blomqvist, an anti-business journalist, to assist him in his attempt to solve a 40-year old murder. As he continues to open new questions, he finds himself spiraling toward an answer he couldn’t possibly have imagined; an answer that points toward other murders, as well. I wouldn’t say the translation is brilliant, but Larsson’s story is wonderful, with richly imagined characters that could have come straight out of real-life. In fact, the character of Salander felt like one of my friends had been plucked out of her life, given the skills to be a hacker, and placed in the book. I couldn’t finish the book (or the trilogy, for that matter), without thinking of this person every time Salander was front and center. That, to me, is a giant compliment to the author.

The Girl Who Played With Fire, Stieg Larsson: Much like “The Empire Strikes Back,” this is the book in which all the good stuff happens. This book brings us the continuing adventures of Blomqvist and Salander, and it’s a great ride. We begin to learn why Salander is the way she is after she’s accused of a double homicide. Blomqvist takes it upon himself to prove her innocence, and “bombs” are dropped. I literally had to set the book aside at one point and digest something I had just read. I don’t really have much else to say without spoiling it, so I’ll just tell you to read …Dragon Tattoo, if only to read this one. It’s modern excellence.

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest, Stieg Larsson: The final book in the trilogy (Although I’ve heard there’s an unfinished fourth that Larsson’s estate is holding on to. Probably a good thing, as it would probably suck if someone else tried to finish it) brings us to the conclusion of the saga started in earnest in …Played With Fire. I can’t stress enough that I didn’t think I was going to like the first book, but had so much fun reading these that I knocked all three out in about a week and a half. I just couldn’t put them down. Every spare moment of time I had was spent reading these books. If you like thrillers, these are the books for you.

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, Rief Larsen: There’s a theme here with last names pronounced the same way this month, I think. This book was a whole lot of fun. While an entirely different type of book, it reminded me in a way of House of Leaves: quite a bit of notations and drawings in the margins, helping shed light on the nature of one T.S. Spivet. Spivet is a twelve-year old cartographer who has been awarded the Baird Award through the Smithsonian. Instead of telling anyone, he makes his own way to Washington, DC from Montana. The book is divided into three sections: The West, The Crossing, and The East. Each section brings with it new challenges for our young hero, as he journeys across the country, where he surprises the Smithsonian with his age. He becomes an instant national celebrity, due to his brilliance as a cartographer, and realizes shortly after his year long residency at the Smithsonian starts that he doesn’t really want to have anything to do with it. He’s a melancholy, conflicted boy, and Larsen’s storytelling is charming. I loved this book, and all its layers and subplots. It was fun.

My Life as an Experiment, A.J. Jacobs: It’s no secret: I love the books of A.J. Jacobs. He’s funny. He’s relevant. And good lord, does his wife put up with a lot of crap. She must be a saint. A departure from the year-long journeys Jacobs enlightened us on in The Year of Living Biblically and The Know-It-All, My Life as an Experiment details ten month-long experiments, and all of Jacobs’ hilarious results. My personal favorites were “My Outsourced Life” (in which he outsources his tasks and correspondence to assistants in India), “The Truth About Nakedness” (in which he poses for nude photographs for Esquire), “and “My Life as a Beautiful Woman” (in which he helps his babysitter set up a profile on a dating site, and then helps her weed through the bad submissions, as well as assist in responding to the ones he and she like). As usual, Jacobs is funny and smart. If you haven’t read any of his books, I would suggest doing so. Now.

To Kill A Mockingbird*, Harper Lee: I’m not going to say too much about this book, because I’m pretty sure I’m the only person I know that didn’t have to read this in school while growing up. I assume most (if not all) of you know this book, or have at least seen the movie (which I haven’t seen, either). So I’ll just say this: I can’t figure out why I had never picked it up before. I loved every word of every page. And I have the feeling it’ll be one of those books that I read again. And again. And again.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Seth Grahame-Smith: Yeah. I read it. And it was glorious. It’s a biography of Lincoln’s life as a vampire hunter. Debunked are the reasons history has given us for the Civil War. Oh, slavery was still an issue, but not in the sense that we’ve come to see it: the war was brought on by vampires in the South wanting to enslave mortal humans. Lincoln was charged with winning this war to prevent that from happening. While the book was pretty clever, for the most part, I knew very quickly (with no indication from the author) that one John Wilkes-Booth would be a vampire. I can hear all of you screaming, “Why would you spoil it?” Well, number one, it’s obvious. Number two, it doesn’t really spoil anything. We all know what happens to Lincoln. This book is about the journey he took to get there. It’s not the most well-written book I’ve ever read, but it’s a whole lot of fun.

Under the Dome, Stephen King: I finally got around to this one, after it sat in my stack for months and months. It’s not Mr. King’s best. The story itself was fun and interesting, but there’s something I’ve noticed about the man: as he gets older, his younger characters get cheesier. It’s obvious that, at this point in his life, Stephen King is out of touch with the way young people talk. Sure, he gets some of the details right, as far as his pop culture references, but when I hear teenage characters saying words that haven’t been used by teenagers since I was in middle school, it kind of takes me right out of the story. I don’t find it believable. And that’s a problem for me (and with me, truthfully). Outside of that, this story about a force-field like dome that descends around a town, locking insiders in, and outsiders out, is a pretty good ride. As sometimes happens with King’s books, the climax comes fast and furious and is over in a matter of a few pages. Which isn’t always a problem, except when you’ve read 1000+ pages and you feel like there she be a little more payoff and conflict involved with the final resolution. But, that’s always been the fun in his books: they’re more about the journey than they are the result. And I like journeys. So, I guess I don’t really have anything to complain about here. If you like Stephen King, you’ll like Under the Dome. If you’re “meh” about Stephen King, you can probably skip it.