Sickboy's Literary Lollapalooza, October 2010

October’s reading was light, which led to a month of no reading (gasp!) in November. No introduction here, we’ll just get right to it…

BOOKS ACQUIRED OCTOBER 2010

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, David Sedaris

The Fort, Bernard Cornwell

At Home: A Short History of Private Life, Bill Bryson

BOOKS READ OCTOBER 2010

A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of my Father, Augusten Burroughs: It’s amazing to me that Burroughs’ childhood didn’t drive him to suicide. Between an alcoholic father with homicidal tendencies, living with his mother’s shrink (who could have probably used one himself, the bastard was so crazy), and all the rest of his young life, I’d say Burroughs ended up alright. A Wolf at the Table, as the subtitle suggests, focuses on the presence of his father in his young life. Here is a story of a child who, at a moment’s notice, must get in the car with his mother and live in a hotel for weeks on end, unable to go to school, unable to see his friends, and living with a fear that he doesn’t quite understand until he’s older. As Burroughs grows up, he finds himself fantasizing about killing his father, and ultimately realizing he’s starting to become the man he fears most. A story of survival, I found Wolf to be more riveting than Running With Scissors.

The Fort, Bernard Cornwell: Usually, I limit my historical fiction to Michael and Jeff Shaara, or the Civil War. But something about this novel about a little known Revolutionary War battle in Penobscot Bay (what was then Massachusetts, but now Maine) caught my attention. Told from the points of view of British loyalists, American Militiamen (including Paul Revere, whom history has been way too kind to, thank you Henry Longfellow), and British soldiers, this story of a fort which should have been overrun in 36 hours and wasn’t due to miscues by American militia commanders was pretty fascinating. Before I read this, I was aware that Revere was not the man he’s been painted to be in our history books, but I had no idea just how self-important, lazy, and bull-headed he actually was. Granted, I was reading a fictional portrayal, but Cornwell did his research, and cites many dispatches, newspapers, and other media of the time between chapters throughout the book. I would certainly recommend this book to anyone with an eye toward American history.

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, David Sedaris: I always hate when Chuckabilly and I read the same book at around the same time. One of us always gets to post about it before the other. He beat me to it on this book. There’s nothing I could say about this book that he didn’t already say in his November edition. So I’ll say this: David Sedaris, animals, modern fables. Read it.