Literary Lollapalooza

Chuckabilly's Literary Lollapalooza, February 2011 Edition

2011-03-09T18:40:00.000-08:00

February is the month for lovers, and so this month’s reading is dedicated to love, sex, and matters of the heart. With some other stuff sprinkled in (for spice!):

This is Literary Lollapalooza, February Edition.

Books Read This Month:

Matched by Ally Condie

And the Heart Says Whatever by Emily Gould

My Horizontal Life by Chelsea Handler

Bonk by Mary Roach

John Constantine, HELLBLAZER: All His Engines by Carey and Manco

Look Out Whitey! Black Power’s Gon’ Get Your Mama! By Julius Lester

The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things by J.T. LeRoy

Y: The Last Man Vol. 2: Cycles by Brian K. Vaughn

Books Acquired:

Fiction: Election by Tom Perrotta, Porno by Irvine Welsh, Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles, Prayers for Rain by Dennis Lehane

Non-Fiction: And the Heart Says Whatever by Emily Gould, A World Lit By Fire by William Manchester

E-Books: John Brown by W.E.B DuBois, The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Where There Is Nothing: Being Volume One of Plays For an Irish Theatre by W.B. Yeats, The Wind Among the Reads by W.B. Yeats, The Tempers by William Carlos Williams, The Poetical Works of Lord Byron, The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Complete Poetical Works of John Keats, The Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens, The Songs, Poems, and Sonnets of William Shakespeare, Songs of Innocence by William Blake, Selections from Wordsworth, The Poetical Works of Jonathan E. Hoag, Milton’s Paradise Lost Books I and II, Little Masterpieces by Benjamin Franklin, Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain, Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, Democracy in America by Alexis De Toqueville, A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain, A Book of Poems: AL QUE QUIERE! By William Carlos Williams (They were all FREE!)

Books Borrowed: John Constantine, HELLBAZER: All His Engines by Carey and Manco, Y: The Last Man: Cycles by Brian K. Vaughan, Procession of the Dead by Darren Shan

Currently Reading: Procession of the Dead by Darren Shan

Reviews of This Months’ Books:

Matched by Ally Condie

Matched garnered reviews linking it to The Hunger Games, a series of books I absolutely love. I didn’t love Matched near as much as I did The Hunger Games, but I can see why my wife did. Oops. That might sound sexist. I assure you I mean no disrespect.

The Hunger Games was about survival and rebellion, and was full of action. And then there was the love triangle. I found that somewhat annoying, but so what? It happens to serve the story, so I can get over it. Even enjoy it a little bit.

Matched is The Hunger Games without the action, survival, and rebellion. Basically it’s just the love triangle. If I were a teenage girl this would probably be one of the best books I’ve read. It’s well-written, and the world created here is fully-fleshed, something I think is essential for a dystopic novel. However, it just didn’t grab me the way The Hunger Games did.

The story is based on a future society where arranged marriages are the rule: every teenager gets “matched” with someone else. People can choose to be single for life, or they get “matched” and get married. Love doesn’t really enter into the equation.

Cassia is our main character and the story begins with her matching ceremony. She is nervous and giddy; excited to find out who she’ll be matched with. When the time comes she is astounded to be matched with her best friend Xander. Almost never do girls get matched with boys from their own town, much less someone they already know. But then things go awry when Cassia discovers a mistake in her “match” materials: Xander’s photo is momentarily replaced by the picture of Ky, another boy she knows vaguely from school. Ky has a secret and a painful past. Cassia starts to fall in love with Ky, the quiet loner she hardly noticed before. But the powers that be will make life difficult unless she falls in line and marries her match, Xander.

Again, it was a good read, but it was a little too love story-ish for me. A fitting beginning to the Valentine month, and I will be excited to read the second book in the series when it comes out, but my wife will surely read it first…and probably enjoy it more than I do. (This is me sticking out my tongue.)

And the Heart Says Whatever by Emily Gould

Emily Gould is the former editor of Gawker.com and is a contributor to The New York Times and The New York Observer. She grew up in nearby Silver Spring, MD (where I work!) and now lives in Brooklyn. I met Ms. Gould when she did a reading and signing at my store. At the time I hadn’t read or had any interest in reading this book. Then I met her and heard her read and I was sold.

This book is a collection of autobiographical essays chronicling Ms. Gould’s young life: from stories about childhood, teenage rebellion, into twenty-something slackerdom, she writes with unflinching honesty and heart-breaking clarity.

A beauty of a book, this is some of the most intimate and revealing writing out there. Perhaps it’s because of my own drug-addled formative years, but Emily Gould writes her life like she’s describing mine, each bad decision and wrong turn a shared memory of loss and redemption.

Powerfully self-aware, Emily Gould transcribes her twenties and all the heartbreak those important years entail. It is a document of a time and place, but one that transports the reader easily not only into Emily Gould’s past, but their own, as well. I highly recommend this book. She’s a great young voice, but one full of confidence.

My Horizontal Life by Chelsea Handler

This is also a collection of autobiographical essays. But that’s where the similarities end. Handler, a well-known comedienne, TV personality, and best-selling author burst onto the scene with this raunchy accounting of her history of one-night stands.

Like a female Tucker Max (minus the giant asshole quotient), she regales the reader with story after story of her many bedroom conquests and does so in hilarious fashion. This is a very funny book. Chelsea Handler is honest in a very self-deprecating and cynical way. These stories may be overtly about her sexual exploits, but in the end they reveal more about the author’s family and friends than it does titillate the reader with erotic ephemera.

I enjoyed this short read very much, and will most likely read her other two best-selling memoirs. My Horizontal Life is good reading, to be sure.

Bonk by Mary Roach

Mary Roach is a science writer who is funny as shit. I previously read her book Stiff which educated me on the history of the uses of the human cadaver in science research. I laughed throughout, but ultimately learned a great deal about a fascinating subject.

Bonk is Mary Roach writing about the history of the scientific study of sexual intercourse. It’s amazing. Hilarious and informative, this is science writing the only way I can take it: entertaining. Roach is a devout researcher, and goes to any length to dig a little deeper into her topic (here it includes duping her husband into a sex-experiment in a laboratory setting), and the results are always fascinating and often cringe-inducing or laugh-out-loud funny.

The history of scientific sexual study is relatively short, and carries with it a stigma of perversion. The scientists that study sexuality are often ridiculed and cast-aside by the public and even the scientific community, but this book does them all a great justice: it takes them seriously. In short and specific essays Mary Roach runs the gamut of scientific sexual research, but like Stiff, does so in an informative, easily readable way. Roach’s writing is like your favorite college professor: warm, engaging, exciting, and often funny and accessible. Great non-fiction for those of us without analytical minds, it makes me want to learn more. J

John Constantine, HELLBLAZER: All His Engines by Carey and Manco

Okay, so this has nothing to do with any monthly themes or ideas. This is the result of a last-minute and unexpected visit to the library.

I love John Constantine: HELLBLAZER. It has been my favorite monthly comic since it was it was first introduced by DC Comics in 1988. However there have been years of absence when I haven’t been a constant reader, so now I’m trying to catch up.

All His Engines is a stand-alone original graphic novel written by Mike Carey with art by Leonardo Manco. This is obviously most intended for fans, but even those unfamiliar are welcome, since it never appeared in single numbered issues, and therefore doesn’t fit into a strict timeline.

It centers on John and his best mate and chauffeur Chas confronting a world-wide epidemic that is causing children to fall into comas without apparent cause. The case brings them from London to L.A., and puts Constantine in the middle if a giant war for power between demons (or gods); where in usual Constantine fashion he plays them all against each other to get what he wants.

The writing is top-notch, and the art is some of the best I have seen in the series, right up at the top with original series artist, John Ridgway. This is a standalone story but it put me right back into the Hellblazer world that I love.

Sorry folks, this one was for me.

Look Out Whitey! Black Power’s Gon’ Get Your Mama! By Julius Lester

Aside from Valentine’s Day, February is also Black History Month. This is in honor of Black History Month.

I had to special order this book from a used book vendor because it is now out of print. I was first introduced to this book when one of my fellow crew members at Utah Shakespearean Festival (NATE!) bought this book at the gem of a used bookstore in Cedar City, UT. I remembered the title (how can you not?) and years later ordered it for my own library.

Julius Lester was the former field secretary of SNCC, and this is his manifesto on race relations as they pertained to America circa 1968. This starts out as a piece of angry black writing (i.e. Malcolm X’s “We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock…Plymouth Rock landed on us!”) and turns into a fascinating look at the history of the black civil rights movement. Okay, it doesn’t really ever stop being an angry black book, but it does stretch out of the box of crazy ‘60’s era propaganda and becomes pretty damn informative about black history.

As a college student I took a history of the African-American course and loved it (it was one of my favorite classes in the ever) and so this was right up my alley. Granted I started reading it because of the insane title, but I actually ended up really enjoying this angry little piece of American history. Julius Lester has a point: It’s not enough to say there is no more racism and move on in our happy white communities: we have to live with the black man, understand his history and the ways the white man has (and continues to degrade him), and fight everyday to undo the horrors that our ancestors inflicted.

This is not a happy book. It was written by an angry man at an angry time. But the good news is that this is now a piece of history, and one that is outdated enough to almost to be irrelevant. We should be ever-mindful of our past, and keep our eyes firmly on the future, vowing never to repeat our past mistakes. I am happy to say that this book that predicted a race war in the U.S. in the coming years was wrong. I am also disgusted by the fact that there are still people out there who can hate another person because of the color of their skin. (And there are many of them. And not just in the south.)

I suggest everyone take a moment to acknowledge the horrendous history of the United States and black people. You don’t have to read this book (you may not even be able to find it), but read some book, any book that explores the black experience in the United States. We need to be reminded. Constantly.

Y: The Last Man: Cycles by Brian K. Vaughn

This is the 2^nd collection of the serialized single-numbered issues of this popular and ground-breaking comic book series. This is also because of that last minute and unexpected trip to the public library.

I read the first volume of this a few months back and I really enjoyed it. However, it took me awhile to get back into it after such a long time away. I think this is a story that will work best if I read straight through, like I had been doing with The Walking Dead.

The writing is great, the characters are flawed and layered, and I’m really intrigued about where it’s heading.

Obviously, you have to read volume one first. So…yeah: Those of you who have read part one, probably have also read part two. If you haven’t read either, you should read part one. Unless you don’t like comic books: Then…erm…yeah. Don’t.

The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things by J.T. LeRoy

Okay, I read this because I was trying to keep to my Valentine’s theme, and it has “heart” in the title. Lame, I know. But this actually ended up being a great end to a month of autobiographical essays.

The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things is published and sold as fiction, but the harrowing short stories collected here are thinly-veiled accounts of the author’s own fucked-up childhood.

LeRoy is an exceptional writer, but I almost can’t recommend this book, because the true stories contained herein are so awful and terrible, that it is almost too painful to read.

From very early memories, we see LeRoy raised by his drug-addicted, prostitute mother, who abuses him, neglects him, raises him as a “pretty little girl” and often abandons him (only to be raped by an angry ex), only to be rescued by his strict, abusively religious grandparents. His is a tale I wouldn’t wish upon anyone: childhood rape, abject poverty, forced drug-use, this is white-knuckle reading. It’s awful, but it’s real. And it’s heart-breaking and life-affirming at the same time.

There’s no wonder he wrote a book about it. What else could you do, to even process the awful shit that happened to you, other than expel it, put it down on paper, so that it’s a real, solid thing.

This is a great, terrible read. It’s heartbreaking, and it often made me shudder, and a couple of time I wanted to hurl. But it is fantastically written. And sometimes reading about somebody else’s fucked-up life puts our own in perspective.

That's all for February, check back in a months' time and see what March has in store! Also, as always, I appreciate your comments, notes and most importantly your suggestions! Please leave me a message letting me know what you think I should read! Happy reading,ya'll.

Sickboy's Literary Lollapalooza, January 2011

2011-02-22T11:03:00.000-08:00

It’s time for January of 2011’s Literary Lollapalooza. It was a light month as far as acquiring books, but that’s okay. My stack of waiting books is getting a little large. Here we go…

BOOKS ACQUIRED JANUARY 2011

Twelve Angry Men, Reginald Rose

Lost in Yonkers, Neil Simon

BOOKS READ JANUARY 2011

Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates, Thomas Cathcart and David Klein: The second book by these two Harvard Philosophy majors, Heidegger… serves the same purpose as Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar: an introduction to philosophy through joke-telling. As the title of this book would suggest, Heidegger… focuses on the philosophies of what happens when we die. Like with Plato… some of the jokes made me LOL, others elicited no reaction from me at all. Another quick, easy read, perfect for a plane or train ride. It’s not going to change your life, but it wasn’t a waste of time, either.

Earth, A Visitor’s Guide to the Human Race, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Following in the footsteps of America: A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction, Earth is a guide to all things Earth-y. I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as I did America, but it had it’s moments of funny. I read it early in the month, and as almost two months have passed since, I don’t really remember what I’d like to say about it. If you’re a fan of the show, you’ll enjoy the book. That’s really about all there is to say. Wow, that review sucked.

Twelve Angry Men, Reginald Rose: Wow. I read a script. It’s been ages. I had never read this particular show, and read it in preparation for auditioning for a theatre that’s presenting it in a few months. It’s an excellent study on how members of a jury work with and against each other to reach a decision about the innocence or guilt of a nineteen year old man accused of killing his father. Loved it.

Lost In Yonkers, Neil Simon: Wait. Two scripts in one month? Something must be wrong. Yes, I had an audition for this show a week ago, and needed to be prepared. Here’s the thing. I don’t really like Neil Simon. Never been a huge fan of anything I’ve read or seen by him. This show seems cute, but I don’t like cute. I like real. The characters in this play come across to me as caricatures, not as real people. Anyway, that’s all there is to say about that. I really need to start writing these as I finish reading the books…

Middlesex*, Jeffrey Euginides: Read this book. Now. Drop whatever other book you’re reading, head immediately to the store, and pick this up. Steal it if you have to. It’s that good. I don’t really mean you should steal it. That’s morally and legally wrong. But READ IT. Middlesex is the tale of three generations of a Greek family, from the husband and wife that first come to America (they’re also brother and sister), to their grandchild, Calliope Stephanides, a hermaphrodite. Calliope (later Cal), relates the story of her grandparents’ immigration, tracing the recessive gene that causes the condition s/he is forced to come to terms with. Chock full of incest, race riots, and stunning human relationships, Middlesex is the front-runner for best book I’ll read this year. I realize it’s still early, but it’s going to be hard to top. It has earned a spot in my top ten books ever, no easy task. Go. Read it. And let me know what you think.

Stay tuned in a couple weeks for February’s Literary Lollapalooza. If, that is, I finish either of the books I’m reading. I’ve been busy. Sue me. And I apologize for the inferior reviews this month. I need to stop waiting so long. Again, sue me.

Literary Lollapalooza, January 2011 Edition

2011-02-20T21:42:00.000-08:00

The new year has begun, and I have finally gotten myself caught up on all my literary 'paloozaing! Whew! I read some pretty good stuff this month. Take a look at my recommendations and then leave me a note letting me know of something you've read recently that blew your mind. In this way we can share!

This is Literary Lollapalooza, January Edition.

Books Read This Month:

After the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Between the Bridge and the River by Craig Ferguson

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

Books Acquired:

Fiction: The Likeness by Tana French, And Another Thing… by Eoin Colfer, The Fates Will Find Their Way by Hannah Pittard, Gun, with Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem, The Best American Comics 2007 edited by Chris Ware, Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Things That Aren’t as Scary, Maybe, Depending on How You Feel About Lost Lands, Stray Cellphones, Creatures from the Sky, Parents Who Disappear in Peru, a Man Named Lars Farf, and One Other Story We Couldn’t Quite Finish, So Maybe You Could Help Us Out. Edited by Ted Thompson

Non-Fiction: A Widow’s Story by Joyce Carol Oates

Poetry: The Door by Margaret Atwood

E-Books: Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

Books Borrowed: After the Flood by Margaret Atwood, and Between the Bridge and the River by Craig Ferguson

Currently Reading: Matched by Ally Condie

Reviews of This Months’ Books:

After the Flood by Margaret Atwood

After the Flood is the second book in Atwood’s proposed MadAddam trilogy, which began with Oryx and Crake. I loved Oryx and Crake and couldn’t wait to get back to this world.

After the Flood takes place during and after the events of the first book, with flashbacks to a world before the first book. So it’s not really a sequel or a prequel, but perhaps a companion piece to Oryx and Crake.

This book, unlike Oryx and Crake’s single protagonist, has two separate female protagonists, which splits the focus into two different storylines that cross, converge and meld into one story. This is part of the book’s problem, by telling two stories from two different perspectives it weakens the focus and lightens the built-in tension. The characters from Oryx and Crake all make minor but important appearances here, deepening the connections in the MadAddam universe.

Atwood’s imagination is still in fine form, expertly continuing to create a fictional world and its inhabitants. Her use of language creates instant mental connections from a fictional world to the one we know, which helps add credibility to her dystopic vision. This is a world and an outcome that isn’t all that farfetched, and Atwood’s firm grip on her viewpoint makes the story a parable of caution in the uses and scope of human advancement.

Sadly, After the Fall is not as good as its predecessor, but it is still ground-breaking science fiction. Not as hauntingly memorable as the story of Snowman, Oryx and Crake, but still achingly familiar, and an almost mirror image view through the eyes of two distinct female protagonists.

If you read Oryx and Crake (and you SHOULD), then you will definitely want to pick up this follow-up. I can’t wait for her conclusion to this incredible trilogy.

Between the Bridge and the River by Craig Ferguson

Aside from hosting TV’s Late Night with Craig Ferguson, TV’s Craig Ferguson also has also found success writing and directing independent films, and writing books. Between the Bridge and the River is his debut novel and it is a fine read, declaring once and for all that TV’s Craig Ferguson is one hell of a writer.

Between the Bridge and the River is a story that is mostly about religion. Or faith. Whatever. The story is separated into different but related storylines centered on different protagonists. One, a famous Scottish TV evangelist now caught up in a sex-scandal, and two American brothers, who seek power through creating a new American church conglomerate, the stories weave through alternating chapters, often crossing and finally converging in a fateful worldwide religious convention where the characters’ lives are forever altered.

This book is hilarious. And sad. And thought-provoking. And irreverent. TV’s Craig Ferguson is not afraid to say the things we’re all thinking, or to think the things we’re all too disgusted to imagine. A comic tour-de-force, this imaginative treatise on modern faith is at once a send-up of modern religious traditions, and a heartfelt and eye-opening study of what faith really means.

I highly recommend this book. This is for fans of TV’s Craig Ferguson, and for fans of thoughtful, funny fiction. Ferguson is a writer to watch for; his wit knows no bounds.

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

This book is a collection of stories that are inter-related, based on a specific time and place. The time is 1974, and the place is New York City. A man has just stretched a tightrope between the twin towers, and as a city holds its breath in horror, admiration, and shock, lives unfold.

Bookended by stories about the real-life tightrope walker that walked the rope hundreds of stories above downtown Manhattan, are stories of authentic and unique lives being lived at a snapshot piece of time. All of the stories are heartfelt and emotional, creating indelible impressions of a New York caught in a moment, like mosquitoes caught in amber.

The most powerful of these, in my opinion, and the one most interconnected to all the others centers on a young Irish immigrant to the city whose monastic religious views has him serving as servant and protector to a cadre of prostitutes, a calling his recently arrived brother sees as decidedly one-sided. He can’t understand how his brother can be so deluded to let these women take advantage of his kindness, but ever without agenda the young man steadfastly looks after his flock, often risking his own life and limb. He gets beaten by pimps and arrested by cops, but his unspoken commitment to these lost souls can’t be beaten. It is a heartbreaking and involving story that draws you deep into the emotional heart of this world, and it is here that the other stories seem to orbit. All of them somehow tinged, connected to, or haunted by this story of a good-hearted man doing his best to do right by societies downtrodden.

Of course, all of the stories are also uniquely tied to that man up on that tightrope who is hundreds of feet in the air, barely visible to the naked eye. He is doing the unthinkable, the unimaginable. He is walking, running, lying down on a tight rope stretched between those brand new twin towers. And meanwhile while people stop and stare up into the sky, lives continue being lived down below. This is a panoramic view of a NYC at a specific place in time. Like many different Polaroids taken from different angles: they all show slight variations of the same thing. The subject may differ, but they share the same backdrop, and occasionally you can piece together a larger picture based on the details you see in those different Polaroid pictures.

This is heart-stopping, amazingly clear and direct prose. McCann is a major talent, and Let the Great World Spin is the announcement of his arrival. Haunting, emotional writing, McCann goes straight to the heart with this collection of stories.

Okay, folks…not a bad start to the beginning of the new year. Let me know what you’re reading that’s blowing your mind! I’m always looking for my next favorite book.

Until next month, happy reading!

Chuckabilly's Literary Lollapalooza, December 2010 Edition

2011-02-18T17:19:00.000-08:00

Okay, so let’s be straight: December sucked. I had very little time to read and what time I spent reading could’ve honestly been better spent doing…pretty much anything else. What other excuse could I have for posting this over two months late?

This is Literary Lollapalooza, December Edition.

Books Read This Month:

Anathem by Neal Stephenson

The Keep by F. Paul Wilson

Books Acquired:

Fiction: The Keep by F. Paul Wilson, Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child, Everything Matters! by Ron Currie, Jr.

Non-Fiction: Nothing to be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes, The Best American Non-Required Reading 2008 edited by Dave Eggers

E-Books:

Books Borrowed: After the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Currently Reading: After the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Reviews of This Months’ Books:

Anathem by Neal Stephenson

I picked up this thick door-stop of a book as an advanced reader copy a couple of years ago. It spent the years sitting on my bookshelf and mocking me.

This December I decided to celebrate the coldest of the winter season reading science fiction…y’know, because it’s cold and removed, relegated to the cold depths of space…(okay, it actually made sense in my head.) I decided that I would start off with this enormous tome that has been mocking me from my bookshelf.

Basically Anathem is…wait for it…MONKS. IN. SPACE! Duh duh dun! Okay really it’s much more complex and complicated than that. But still.

The idea is that on a planet much like Earth (pretty much identical to Earth), the world is separated into the Mathic world, consisting of monks who study math, and the Praxic world, consisting of common rubes like you and me, who really have no idea what is going.

The book is set firmly in the Mathic World, and Stephenson was dead-set on making sure the reader understood that world. After 25 pages I was still reading description of the monks’ Concent, down to the smallest detail. It was right about here that I wavered. Do I go on reading something I don’t understand or appreciate, or do I soldier on like a good reader, and see if I was being short-sighted? Answer: I soldiered on, God help me.

It got better. You should know that. It got downright interesting and exciting (right about the time people started doing things…eh, about ¾ of the way through the hefty tome).

In the end, I have to say it was okay. I don’t read a whole of sci-fi (or as the author calls it “speculative fiction”, whatever that is), but this was a whole, whole lot of introduction to what ended up being a not-very mind-blowing conclusion.

It didn’t suck. Well, alright, at times it sucked. But in the end I kinda enjoyed it. But was it worth the three-weeks it took me to read it? Nope. That was time I could’ve been reading something…well, um…good. Skip it.

The Keep by F. Paul Wilson

I was recommended this book from a friend who knew I was looking for good science fiction. I trust his opinions, so I was looking forward to this horror novel by an author I hear many great things about. And the premise sold me on the spot: The Nazi’s vs. Cthulu.

Sadly, the book is very dated (it was written in the early ‘80s), and the characters and plotlines are very clichéd, including a cheesy sex-scene that read very much like a bad romance novel. The premise was great, and even though Cthulu turned out to be more Dracula than otherworldly madness-inducing monsters, it was fun rooting against the Nazis, as the resident evil Romanian overlord kills them all ruthlessly.

It was fun. That’s all. I am no smarter having read this. I am no more enriched than I was before. It was trite and insincere writing (it was Wilson’s first novel, and I plan on giving his Repairman Jack series a try), but we also get Nazis dying in horrible, bloody ways. I can’t really knock that.

Well, it was a pretty pathetic end to an otherwise great year of reading. December sucks. I blame Christmas. And that fat bastard, Santa.

Chuckabilly's Best of 2010 Literary Lollapalooza

2011-01-02T22:26:00.000-08:00

NON-FICTION:

1. What is the What by Dave Eggers

What I said then:

“What is the What is the life story of a surviving “Lost Boy” of the Sudan… The story is a heartbreaking one of many trials and tribulations.”

“This is an incredibly true story about one man’s overcoming great odds to survive and live happily as an outsider in the United States.”

“Seriously, Eggers is one hell of a writer.”

What I say now:

“This one is shelved in fiction, but Valentino Deng is a real man whose tale is told here by the talented Mr. Eggers, so I include it in my non-fiction picks. Like Zeitoun this is an incredibly true story of an ordinary man overcoming unbelievable odds.”

2. Into the Wild by Jonathan Krakauer

What I said then:

“Into the Wild, is a troublesome blend of biography, outdoor enthusiasm, and personal authorial insight and wisdom. It is as fascinating a read as it is a short, strange trip into another man’s life and death.”

“I recommend this book. Highly.”

What I say now:

“I still enjoyed Sean Penn’s film adaptation more than the original source material, but Mr. Krakauer’s scholarly musings on Christopher McCandless’ wanderlust evoke more personal reflection and less maudlin melancholy. A rich portrait of a unique young man.”

3. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

What I said then:

“Mary Roach is probably the funniest person to ever write about the uses of the human body after it has expired.”

“I wouldn’t have believed I would have so much fun reading about human corpses… The accounts of medical grave-robbing are as inspiring as they are horrifying.”

“Science never seemed so fun!”

What I say now:

“Again, I think of this book so often it almost frightens me. It inspired me to read the original Frankenstein and re-watch Branagh’s film adaptation, and it changed my mind about being an organ-donor. Now I watch the X-Files movie and am reminded of early experiments involving transplanting a dog’s head onto another dog’s body. Yep, this one sticks with me.”

4. Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain

What I said then:

“Medium Raw is a love letter to the art of cooking and to those who still devote themselves to it.”

“Bourdain creates a quite comprehensive look at what his life is like post-kitchen: he travels, he writes, he drinks, he reminisces, he raises a family…For Bourdain, life is pretty good. He gets paid to travel and eat and record what he does.”

“Reading this is a joy simply because for the week that you read this you’ll have Tony Bourdain talking in your head constantly.”

What I Say Now:

“While this isn’t the groundbreaking expose that Kitchen Confidential was, it is lighter, wider in scope, and Bourdain is infinitely better adjusted: A great book of essays by our consummate traveler/foodie.”

5. Funny Misshapen Body by Jeffrey Brown

What I said then:

“Brown’s great gift is his ability to tell a story in a very small hand-drawn square. The amount of detail he manages to squeeze in to those little 2-inch squares is astounding, never failing to connect one instantly with their own awkward childhood, or hard-partying college days. The fact that this memoir is practically told without words (the text never overtakes a frame, and is always a tiny portion of the 2-inch square) is a testament to Mr. Brown’s tremendous talent.”

What I say now:

“I am still amazed at what this guy can do in an inch and half square with no words.”

6. The Audacity to Win by David Plouffe

What I said then:

“This is a book that wallows in election tedium, but as a insider’s view of the campaign that changed the way America votes it is a fascinating account of how a handful of people with a shared belief in a candidate and his ability to operate outside of political norms did everything against the book and came up big winners, and ultimately reshaped the face of the American electorate.”

“Just seeing the nuts and bolts of the campaign is worth the read. But seeing candidate Obama taking the same slow, thoughtful approach to every issue that arises as he does everyday as our president is glorious. It seems we got the right man for the job.”

7. The Next 100 Years by George Friedman

What I said then:

“At a glance Friedman’s foray into the future is an elaborate guessing game. A parlor trick involving crystal balls and ominous knocking on tables and walls. But then something interesting happens: It starts to make sense.”

“I like the thought it inspires, the conversations it encourages, and the questions it urges... A fascinating read.”

8. Morbid Curiosity: The Disturbing Demises of the Famous and Infamous by Alan W. Petrucelli

What I said then:

“The book contains hundreds of factoids surrounding the deaths of celebrities and newsmakers, and is great fun (if you think death can be fun, that is.)”

“This book is a trivia lover’s dream.”

9. Bedwetter by Sarah Silverman

What I said then:

“Silverman is dangerously funny, and seems honestly unable to keep from being funny… The surprise is how emotionally tuned-in Silverman turns out to be: She is at once honest, self-critical, vulnerable, and defensive.”

“In any case this is a highly enjoyable memoir, from her days as a hairy little bedwetting Jewess at summer camp, to her days as an underappreciated non-ivy-league SNL writer, Silverman is uncompromising and unflinching.”

10. The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb

What I said then:

“The fact that Crumb manages to faithfully reproduce the first book of the bible in beautifully illustrated detail is remarkable.”

“The Christian Right may disapprove because (Heavens!) Eve’s breasts are naked (as they would have been), but this is a damn fine literal translation of the first book of the Old Testament, made abundantly accessible to every single denominator, not just the most common. Words are no longer necessary. Crumb’s beautiful but crude drawings tell the whole story.”

“The truth is Crumb’s detailed illustrations provide a marvel of cross-cultural understanding… Here is hope that mankind might better come to understand and love one another by viewing Crumb’s brilliant illustrations, and love one another as the distant cousins that the bible asserts that we are.”

FICTION:

1. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

What I said then:

“Those needing a clear path and a well-lit view will steer clear. And it’s good they do. This isn’t for them. It’s for me. And people like me, that like to believe that books matter, and that words hold power….”

“I found myself reading this book compulsively and obsessing over every little detail, lest something should be missed… To tell the truth, even now I am a bit haunted by it.”

“This is by far one of the most unusual and challenging books I have ever read…(it) will be with me forever.”

What I say now:

“Haunting. Absolutely haunting. There are few days that pass that I don’t think of this book. In many ways it has become a watermark of what I am looking for in a book. I crave that next book that will swallow me whole, and leave me perplexed and breathless and terrified.”

“Funny story: I placed this book in Borders as a staff pick, wrote a little blurb, and placed it on an endcap in the Horror section; said something similar to what I said above. A few days later I find that someone has added a comment to my staff pick blurb. A customer has taken the time and effort to find a scrap of paper and write an addendum to my staff pick. I laughed, but ultimately just understood why he felt the need to do so. The note, a small plain white square tucked into the corner of the plastic shelf-talker, said simply: ‘I agree.’ --Brian.”

“Again, not a book for everyone, but those of you willing to give yourself over to a mystery and follow its many mazes may find yourself haunted like me and Brian.”

2. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

What I Said Then:

“Written in a heightened style, mixing reality with metaphysical planes, Kafka on the Shore reads like a strange but engrossing dream. With fun characters, pop culture references, music, fish falling from the sky, and talking cats. This book is one of a kind.”

What I say now: “Simply a magical read. Written like a noir-influenced, Saki-soaked dream. The characters are incredible and lovable, the adventure is inspiring, and the goings-on just this side of downright weird. I can’t wait to read more Murakami.”

3. The Hunger Games—Suzanne Collins

What I said then:

“This is a great modern dystopic novel full of great storytelling, great characters, and tons of action, intrigue and adventure.”

“This is a modern classic.”

4. The Magicians—Lev Grossman

What I said then:

“A haunting, heartbreaking work of youthful excess, The Magicians draws from a myriad of popular children’s fantasies to create its magical landscape. As much a paean to The Chronicles of Narnia as it is to Harry Potter, mixed with the drunken ennui of Somerset Maugham, this one will make you nostalgic for simpler days and almost make you believe those worlds still exist.”

“A great, propulsive read.”

What I say now:

“Again, this one just sticks with me. And it always pops up in my head when enjoying some of the famous source material: latest Harry Potter film, there is The Magicians. The latest Narnia film: The Magicians. I can’t wait for the sequel to this one.”

5. Scott Pilgrim V. 1-6—Brian Lee O’Malley

What I said then:

“This is the most fun you can have while reading. I’m not kidding. Scott Pilgrim is the greatest graphic novel document of modern twenty-something culture probably in the ever. With frequent gamer nods and slacker mentality to spare, this is funny and fun and utterly charming.”

What I say now:

“Rating: Awesome.”

6. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

What I said then:

“Never Let Me Go is a rare piece of fiction that is part science fiction, part literary coming-of-age tale, and part mystery.”

“Deeply engrossing and intriguing, it is a book that works on many levels at once…Spellbinding fiction.”

What I say now:

“This book is another staff pick at Borders and it sells like wildfire. I have to refill my staff pick shelf constantly with this title. Beautiful, delicate storytelling, with a tremendous pay-off.”

7. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

What I said then:

“Oryx and Crake is an inventive, dystopic novel that makes great hay out of current scientific and philosophic issues such as genetics and cloning… But the heart of the story is how Crake and Oryx got us to where we are, extinct but for one man, and the soured relationships that tread the path.”

“This is astonishing science fiction. Even going above and beyond such a title, it is an invigorated imagining of a very possible human future. Like Bradbury and Orwell before her, Atwood has created a world all its own that is at once believable and frightening.”

8. The Angel’s Game—Carlos Zafon-Ruiz

What I said then:

“This book is a love letter to books and book-lovers everywhere.”

“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.”

9. Point Omega by Don DeLillo

What I Said Then:

“A short and brisk novel of surprising force.”

“DeLillo is a master of those tiny human moments that add up to make a life. Both profound and shattering, Point Omega is a breath-taking work about the struggle to reconcile the soul with its surroundings, and to understand the scope of space and time.”

“DeLillo’s lean prose is as spare and athletic as ever, weighing in at only 117 pages, it is a breathless and energetic read.”

What I say now:

“DeLillo is an American master that can evoke more in 117 pages than most writers would be happy to capture in 1000 pages. Exceptional.”

10. Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

What I said then:

“Crossing as many genres and styles as one book can, this is book is a tour-de-force. It is an amazing literary force to be reckoned with, demanding to be taken seriously with its serious social issues of homelessness, gentrification, race wars, class wars, drug use and addiction and heartfelt examination of what it’s like to be raised white in a largely black community.”

“It is both a tough coming of age novel about growing up amid gang and drug influences in Brooklyn, and a fantasy story about a kid who inherits a ring from a dying superhero that bestows magical powers upon the person who wears the ring.”

“An important and devastating novel.”

What I say now:

“The comic book nerd in me loves that this book takes the superhero theme as its main point of attack. The fiction writer in me loves that Lethem takes that superhero theme and shoves into the background making it just another fact of life in the midst of a messy 80’s adolescence.”

Honorable Mentions:

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

What I said then:

“Her writing is elegant and precise, and yet moves with the fierce yearning of love.”

“This is beautiful and warm prose that gently urges you to keep reading. And when one finishes, you won’t be able to resist diving into the next irresistible world. An incredible debut collection, this is the type of book that as soon as you finish it you want to tell somebody else about it. Don’t resist that urge.”

The Passage by Justin Cronin

What I said then:

“…where this novel exceeds its peers is in its scope and vision. We see our world. We see our world die. We see the remnants of a world in chaos. And then we see the world reborn. At 700+ pages this is a pretty hefty beach read, but you won’t find a more engrossing and engaging beach read this year.”

“Cronin is a highly-skilled writer and his words flow effortlessly. He deftly balances character and action and finely-hewn details to create not just a believable fictional world but several.”

The Great Perhaps by Joe Meno

What I said then:

“Joe Meno is a writer with a unique style. He writes the absurd while remaining completely honest with the emotional world of his characters.”

“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.”

Sickboy's Literary Lollapalooza, December 2010

2011-01-02T20:28:00.000-08:00

Let’s go ahead and finish the year. And maybe I’ll be better about posting consistently this year. I make no promises, though. An “*” denotes a Pulitzer Winner, as I continue to work my way through the list. I give you Literary Lollapalooza, December 2010 edition…

BOOKS ACQUIRED DECEMBER 2010

Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar, Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein

Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates, Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein

Full Dark, No Stars, Stephen King

Life, Keith Richards

Earth, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Middlesex*, Jeffrey Eugenides

American Pastoral*, Philip Roth

The Pirate Hunter, Richard Zacks

Holidays on Ice, David Sedaris

BOOKS READ DECEMBER 2010

At Home: A Short History of Private Life, Bill Bryson: It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Bill Bryson. A Walk in the Woods is one of my favorite books, and his self-deprecation and conversational tone make his books very funny and they’re always a pleasurable read. Bryson departed from his usual travel books a few years ago with A Short History of Nearly Everything, and followed that with The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, a wonderfully humorous memoir of his childhood. Continuing his streak of non-travel writing, Bryson decides to stay home for this book. He stays on the English countryside and takes us on a tour of the house in which he and his wife reside, giving us a history of the homes we live in, in the process. From construction materials to how the rooms came to be as we know them now, At Home is a fascinating read about the history of not just our homes, but civilization as we know it. I had the pleasure of learning about rats, sewage, the violence of the early spice trade, guano, bedbugs, and ridiculously elaborate houses. Bryson puts it best in the introduction: “Houses aren’t refuges from history. They are where history ends up.” You’ll see your living space in a completely new light after reading this book.

Say You’re One Of Them, Uwem Akpan: Written by an African Jesuit Priest, Say You’re One of Them is another stunning debut collection of stories. This is the second book in recent memory that I’ve picked up bearing the Oprah’s Book Club sticker (the first was The Story of Edgar Sawtelle; a brilliant book), and I’m always slightly ashamed when I purchase them. I feel like I’m conforming or, worse yet, showing too much of a feminine side by purchasing a book with Oprah’s seal of approval. Well, I think I’ll purchase them with pride from here on out, as I’ve thoroughly enjoyed both of them. Oprah and her people may just know what they’re talking about. Akpan’s debut book is basically two novellas and three short stories of varied lengths, all told from the points of view of children in war- and conflict- torn areas of Africa. We have the story of a Christmas day told by the brother of a teenage prostitute, the story of a boy and his sister sold into slavery by their uncle, the story of a little girl and her best friend (of a different religion) who are told not to speak to each other anymore, a sixteen year old Muslim boy traveling south to his father’s place of birth after riots break out in his city and the dangers of his journey, and the heartbreaking story of a child who watches as her father is forced to kill her mother. Vividly told, incredibly gritty, Akpan’s voice as an author is not to be missed as he shows us the horrors of life in certain areas of Africa. It is impossible (in my opinion) to read this book and not want to do something. I anxiously await another offering from Akpan.

Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes, Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein: This was not quite the book I was expecting. Written by two Philosophy Majors from Harvard, the book does include jokes, and it serves as a nice introduction to philosophy. The jokes demonstrate the ideals behind different philosophical movements throughout history and Cathcart and Klein give a short crash course on each line of thought. It’s a quick, really easy read, and some of the jokes did make me laugh out loud, while others did nothing more than bring a smile, and some got no reaction from me at all. If you’re looking for something to kill on a plane or during an evening by yourself, this book isn’t a bad choice. Unless, of course, you have no interest in philosophy. In which case, maybe you shouldn’t bother…

Have a great first month of 2011! I promise I’ll try to be more consistent with posting this year. (Keep in mind, the key word there is “try.”)

Sickboy's Literary Lollapalooza, October 2010

2011-01-02T19:28:00.000-08:00

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.

Sickboy's Literary Lollapalooza, September 2010

2011-01-02T14:57:00.000-08:00

I’m a few months behind, mainly because I’ve been kinda lazy, but we’ll all get over it. Eventually. Technically, I should have four posts, but I was too distracted and busy to read anything in November, so we’ll only have three. Since it’s been a few months, I may not have as much to say about some of these books as I would have had I written these on time. Sorry. As always, an “*” denotes a Pulitzer Prize winner. I’ll start things off with Literary Lollapalooza for September of 2010…

BOOKS ACQUIRED SEPTEMBER 2010

Streets of Laredo, Larry McMurtry

Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, Rob Sheffield

BOOKS READ SEPTEMBER 2010

Tinkers*, Paul Harding: The only things I can honestly remember about this book four months later is that someone repaired clocks as a hobby, it’s about a father and son, and I enjoyed this book more than I did March and Gilead. I’d love to write more, but other books have filled my brain with other thoughts…

Interpreter of Maladies*, Jhumpa Lahiri: Buy this book, read it, let it sit for a week, then read it again (Says the guy who hasn’t read it a second time. Yet.). A stunning debut of short fiction, every story focuses on the human need for love and connections. Heartbreaking, beautifully crafted, and vividly human, Lahiri’s collection of nine stories is certainly deserving of the first Pulitzer for Fiction awarded this millennium.

Sh*t My Dad Says, Justin Halpern: It’s a Twitter account, a book, and a television sitcom. One of the three is not funny. Thankfully, this book is. Rather than just being a collection of random sayings, Halpern introduces us to his father by giving us insight on growing up under this man’s roof. It’s not just about the irreverent things the man says, it’s also the story of a son’s relationship with his father. It’s a quick, easy read, and it had me roaring with laughter.

One Red Paperclip, Kyle MacDonald: You may have heard about the young man who started with a red paperclip, posted it on Craig’s List for a trade, and worked his way up to a house. One Red Paperclip is the story of the journey, from paperclip to a weekend with Alice Cooper, to a movie role for a film produced by Corbin Bernsen, to a house in Kipling, Saskatchewan, and everything in between. However, the story is just as much about connecting with people, helping others out, and having fun along the way. It’s a fun little read, nothing heavy by any means, but I enjoyed reading about how MacDonald decided which trades to make, and which to reject. You can still read about his current adventures at www.oneredpaperclip.com

Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man’s Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut, Rob Sheffield: I like Duran Duran okay. I like girls a lot. And I enjoyed Sheffield’s first book, Love is a Mix-Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time. So, it would make sense that I would enjoy this book as well, right? Right. In fact, to be perfectly honest, both …Duran Duran and …Mix-Tape are the type of book I wish I had written. Maybe next time around. Sheffield’s belief is that Duran Duran speak the language of women. Girls love them, that’s why they’re still around. And if you can learn the language of Duran Duran, you can talk the language of women. It’s certainly a plausible theory. The book is set up like a mix-tape, Sheffield titles each chapter with the name of one of his favorite songs of the ‘80s, and regales you with stories of finding his way and discovering who he is during his youth. Whether discussing the fact that your boyfriend has probably seen “Pretty Woman” more times than you (“…once for every relationship”), insisting that growing up Catholic prepares you for being a record junkie (I buy it), the fact that you can start a conversation with any guy by mentioning the Clash, Prince’s opening guitar chord in “Purple Rain,” or telling stories about his job driving an ice cream truck, Sheffield knows exactly how music, women, and love fit into the lives of male record geeks everywhere. Instead of continuing on, I’ll let Sheffield entice you to read his book… “Sometimes when a girl goes away, the conversation doesn’t end. You keep talking to her, just in case she can hear.” So very true.

Streets of Laredo, Larry McMurtry: The final installment in the Lonesome Dove series (the second written), Streets of Laredo follows the final adventure of Captain Woodrow Call. Back are familiar faces in Pea Eye, Lorena, Bolivar, and Clara, as Call hunts down a train bandit. Written more with the eloquence of Lonesome Dove than the two prequels were, Laredo was a fitting end for the saga of Call and McRae. Melancholy, funny, and everything in between, Laredo is a worthy of a read.

I think it’s obvious which of these books I enjoyed the most, and remember the best four months later. I’ll be back sometime soon with October and December’s Lollapaloozas!

Happy Reading, everyone!

Chuckabilly's BIRTHDAY Literary Lollapalooza, November 2010 edition

2010-12-04T20:31:00.000-08:00

So, November is my birthday, and every year about this time I try to populate my reading list with only my favorite (or most-likely-to-be-favorite soon) authors and books. This year is no different. Every author represented here are among my most respected and admired. In short, November is my favorite month of the year. Here’s why…

This is Literary Lollapalooza, November Edition.

Books Read This Month:

Sunset Park by Paul Auster

Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King

The Walking Dead Books 3 and 4 by Robert Kirkman

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris

An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin

Demons in the Spring by Joe Meno

Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain

Books Acquired:

Fiction:

Non-Fiction:

E-Books: Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain

Books Borrowed: Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King, The Walking Dead Books 3 and 4 by Robert Kirkman, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris, Demons in the Spring by Joe Meno, Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain, The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Currently Reading: The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Reviews of This Months’ Books:

Sunset Park by Paul Auster

Paul Auster is a great American novelist. He has a storied career of writing about writerly-types who exile themselves into urban solitude because of a singular act of violence that has metastasized into a debilitating social phobia or general anti-socialism.

Sunset Park tells the story of Miles Heller, a 28 year old college drop-out, who is now working as a trash-out worker, cleaning out abandoned foreclosed homes in South Florida. After a devastating accident where he shoved his brother into an oncoming car, he has exiled himself from all family and most friends in a desire to start over fresh. On the side Miles takes pictures of the abandoned items he encounters in these newly empty homes, chronicling the weird and sometimes heartbreaking tales of the people who once owned them. The one bright side in his life is Pilar, the 17 year old high school student who he meets one day in a park, brought together because they are both reading The Great Gatsby.

However, things soon complicate when Pilar’s older sister learns of the affair and begins demanding gifts from Miles taken from the abandoned homes he empties (technically everything inside belongs to the bank that holds the note). In order to avoid prosecution on charges of statutory rape, Miles flees back to the Sunset Park area of Brooklyn. In Brooklyn, Miles finds himself squatting in a house with Bing, a childhood friend, who runs a repair shop called not-too-subtly The Hospital for Broken Things. The other roommates sharing the squat are Alice, a grad student whose dissertation is based greatly on William Wyler’s Time of Their Lives, and Ellen, an artist whose work is getting increasingly, more personally sexually graphic. The squatter’s home brilliantly mirrors Bing’s small shop: a place for broken people.

Auster paints a great portrait of modern artistic types, broken but essentially functioning in current day New York. With his penchant for well-structured drama, and characters that leap off the page, Auster is at the top of his game here. The true standouts for the book though are Miles parents: father Morris, a book publisher, a real mensch, who keeps questioning his past mistakes. And his mother, a fairly famous TV actress, who has returned to the New York stage to play Winnie in Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days. (Little known fact: Auster is in fact a bit of a Beckett admirer and even edited and provided the foreword to the Grove Centenary editions of Beckett’s complete works).

Auster writes lovingly about people you either might know already or people you’d love to know. His Brooklyn is not so much a place, as a state of mind, and a very enjoyable read indeed.

Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King

Happy freaking birthday to me! This is what I read on my actual birthday. No fooling. Fate couldn’t have worked out better.

As many of you know, Stephen King is my favorite author and the only author I truly keep up with (as in I read every damn thing the man publishes). So a collection of stories that came out on November 9^th, my 35^th birthday: Couldn’t be better timed. Almost like the guy knew what he was doing. Hmmm…

Anyway, Full Dark, No Stars is a collection of three novellas and one short story. But here, dear readers: please heed the title! This is dark, dark stuff. No light, not even from the faintest stars. This collection in fact is so dark that I hesitate to recommend it.

Covering a variety of topics the four stories collected here focus mostly on the act of revenge, either physically or spiritually.

The first novella “1922” tells the story of a depression-era farmer who with the help of his teenaged son manages to kill off his meddling wife who owns their property and wants to sell it to the bank. He dispatches the wife and saves the farm, but he spends the (relatively short) remainder of his days regretting every moment of it.

In “Big Driver” a female novelist famous for writing mystery cozies about a group of elderly women who solve quaint small-town murders is brutally beaten and raped on a lonely, stretch of deserted back road. Barely alive, and shaken to her core, she manages to drag herself from her makeshift grave and back to safety. But what to do about that big, big man in the trucker cap? The one who raped her and left her for dead? The one who just might be waiting for another woman to enter his trap?

“A Good Marriage” is the last thing you want to read if you are part of a long, happy marriage. It tells the story of a terrible secret unearthed, making one wife question how well you can ever really know the people you love. A rattling, chilling tale of secrets better left hidden, and doors better left unopened.

“Fair Extension” is the shortest and lightest story of the collection. A welcome bit of gallows humor, this story shares much in common thematically with the Bachman novel Thinner. A guy stops to see a roadside vendor offering “Fair Extension”, but what exactly is he selling? Faced with the onset of a particularly aggressive cancer, our main character has little hope, but what if he had the chance to extend his life? First he must make it “fair”, i.e. he must swap his fortune with someone he hates. A skeleton grin of a darkest night campfire tale, this wry story asks just what you would do for another chance.

This is the darkest of King’s writings in a decade. This collection more comfortably fits under King’s pseudonym Richard Bachman, the guy who writes unflinchingly awful stuff that is undoubtedly human, yet horrific, the nasty bits we care not acknowledge about the human heart. The fact that King chose not to publish this under his more blood-thirsty pseudonym is telling. Perhaps he finally wants credit for the worst thoughts of which he is capable, or maybe he is just owning up, saying look, I don’t like it either, but sometimes people are just sick, awful human beings. The fact that he felt the need to apologize to his readers, says much about his state of mind after completing this collection. This is in many ways a much more mature King, choosing to face the darkest facets of our reality rather than creating a fantasy of monsters. Not for the squeamish, but you Bachman fans out there (you know who you are) will find this hard to put down.

The Walking Dead Books 3 and 4 by Robert Kirkman

This continuing story of a group of survivors in the aftermath of a full-blown zombie apocalypse is one of the best written and drawn comic books out there. Read this series, in any form necessary, and then tune in to AMC to watch the brilliant TV series adaptation by Frank Darabont (The Mist, Shawshank Redemption, and The Green Mile).

While the TV show has had some weak writing moments in the first season, the pilot remains one of the best of all time, and rumors have it that Darabont has fired the writing team for season two and while planning writing episodes himself is also farming eps out to freelancers, ala Doctor Who.

But never mind television! Get back to reading this riveting tale of the zombie apocalypse! Author Kirkman is threatening something like 700 issues of the monthly comic. I can’t wait!

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris

I can’t lie. David Sedaris is a superstar to me. The essayist and NPR contributor is one of the funniest, wittiest, and warmest of writers out there. His bestselling collections of essays cover many topics, most notably his wacky family and upbringing (including wacky sister Amy, star of Strangers with Candy, and brother Rooster, who well, really…needs no further qualification). He is such a superstar to me that when he visited the downtown DC Borders to sign copies of his book When You are Engulfed in Flame I was a stuttering, spluttering mess, jerkily turning pages and applying “autographed copies” stickers to the stack of books before him. Luckily he was gracious enough to pretend that I was not freaking out. He just asked me questions about my life, and told me funny little stories in his soft-spoken way.

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunks is a charming little collection of stories that for some reason remind me of Mr. Sedaris himself and the way he entertained an audience of me, one afternoon, over Sharpie fumes in the Borders café. With illustrations by children’s picture book author and artist Ian Falconer, this is a collection of anthropomorphized animal tales. Perhaps fable is not too unlikely a term? Much like the ancient tales of the fox and the crow and mouse and the lion, these modern tales of hubris are told through the guise of animal friends, but the sad, funny, and often meaningful outcomes of the stories are all too human. In searching out the little ways we embarrass ourselves, or belittle one another, or love the most unlike ourselves, Sedaris has created a gem of a modern bestiary. Fables for a modern generation, this collection can be devoured in an afternoon. Then you can spend a year poring over all the glorious little details, and the gorgeous illustrations to your heart’s content.

An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin

This new novel by Steve Martin (yes, that Steve Martin) is about the inner workings of the fine art world. Martin, an avid art collector since the early 90’s, here recreates a New York art scene through the eyes of a young idealistic art writer and the beautiful, smart, and ambitious object of his desire, Lacey Yeager. Covering the years between 1990 and the present, Martin follows the exploits of his flawed and engaging main character as she makes her way to the top of the NYC art world, from Sotheby’s flunky to fledgling collector to modern art gallery owner; we see the world changing around us.

From the beginning of the art boom when classic paintings began selling for extraordinary amounts of money, to the opportunistic 2000’s when the next big thing was bringing equal numbers just based on the promise of greatness, to the crash of art futures with the collapse of the financial markets in 2008, this is a veritable modern art history class in novel form. So great is Martin’s depth of knowledge on the topic, that he seamlessly weaves in subtle distinctions in art style and class by including numerous full-color illustrations of the famous (or semi-famous) artists he references. By the end this is as edifying a read as it an enjoyable one. I know more about art and about what drives the whims and desires of the art collector, than I could’ve ever imagined. From market variations, to small imperfections in notorious works, the inner workings of the art world are laid bare for the unitiated. This book quite simply, does for the art world what The Devil Wear’s Prada did for high fashion.

But this book is so much more than high glam expose, and so much more than the story of a small town girl in the big city. Lacey Yeager is the most difficult of protagonists: she is ambiguously written. We are never sure if she is an innocent in the grips of an evil influence, a seductress willingly using men to reach her goals, or just a girl doing what it takes to make it in the world, and that is the beauty as well. Because she isn’t any one of those things, she’s all of them. A beautifully complex character that isn’t afraid to be written honestly, warts and all, Lacey is the rarest kind of modern hero: one who isn’t that heroic, or admirable, but somehow beautiful in her singular ambition.

I loved this book immensely. Whereas Martin’s previous forays into literature (Shopgirl, The Pleasure of My Company) felt like amusing little heart-touching trifles, here he digs down and writes a great character and a great story full of wit, gravitas, and emotion. A genuinely gorgeous novel, this is not to be missed.

Demons in the Spring by Joe Meno

Joe Meno is probably one of the most unique writers writing today. His books always verge on the bizarre and focus on the sad, stolid lives of somehow broken and unhappy people.

How odd then, that I always leave Meno’s work feeling so joyous. Demons in the Spring is Meno’s 2^nd short story collection, but the first I have read of Meno’s short fiction. Like Meno’s novels that I have read (The Boy Detective Fails, Hairstyles of the Damned, and The Great Perhaps) the stories collected here almost all occur in a universe that is slightly off. Almost all are inexplicably bizarre, and haunting: tales of a broken world and the lost, lonely people who inhabit it.

In Meno’s world it’s not out of the ordinary for buildings to disappear, or for people to turn into clouds, or for a woman’s internal organs to be replaced by a miniature city of lights. Despite these sometimes odd and off-putting worlds, what Meno knows and nails is the sense of loneliness and loss we all feel at one or another time on this crazy planet. Meno is at his very, very best in this collection of twenty stories (collected here with illustrations of 20 of the best cutting-edge illustrators in the business). Each story is its own sad little Metropolis, and despite all the best hope, there is no Superman.

Meno writes what it’s like to be human, from that sad mournful place, where we all find ourselves from time to time. The only difference is Meno doesn’t offer solutions, only more malaise, every so often turning into indifferent whimsy and ridiculous fun.

So why am I smiling again? Joe Meno, like Tim Burton, can only infuse his darkest visions with elements of fun, leaving an indelible impression of joy with every instance of loss.

Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain

Anthony Bourdain has gone from being a cook, to a groundbreaking author, to a travel writer, to a celebrity chef, to a Top Chef guest judge and veritable television star. What Bourdain really is, besides being a professional observer and provocateur, is a writer.

The hugely-popular New York Times bestselling expose of the cooking world, Kitchen Confidential, was published nearly twenty five years ago. Since then Tony Bourdain has been known more as a traveler and commentator than as an actual cook. These twenty-five years later Bourdain published what is the greatest companion piece to that earlier piece-de-resistance: Medium Raw is a love letter to the art of cooking and to those who still devote themselves to it.

While acknowledging that his “chef” days are far behind him, Bourdain creates a quite comprehensive look at what his life is like post-kitchen: he travels, he writes, he drinks, he reminisces, he raises a family. His priorities have completely changed, he has mellowed and softened, and he’ll gladly admit that he couldn’t even make it to the finals of Top Chef (on his BEST DAY), nor does he want to. For Bourdain, life is pretty good. He gets paid to travel and eat and record what he does.

Sure, he can still hurl a few untoward syllables in the direction of Food Network from time to time, and while he’ll not end up on Rachel Ray’s guest list anytime soon, the Bourdain that emerges here is a much older, much wiser, much more circumspect Bourdain than we encountered even a decade ago. He no longer feels the need to bad mouth TV celebuchefs, after all how bad can they be? We are all after-all just making a living, right? So what if so-and-so has 14 cookbooks, they’re not hurting you, so why hurt them, right?

But alas if you think Bourdain has gone totally soft, never fear, Tony is still pissed off. And he’ll still proudly list his heroes and his enemies, with reasons for each. And he’ll still proudly declaim food writer Alan Richman a douche bag. (Trust me, after you read the chapter titled “Alan Richman is a Douche Bag”, you will, too.)

What’s great is that after years writing for books and for TV Mr. Bourdain now writes like he talks (or talks like he writes). Either way, reading this is a joy simply because for the week that you read this you’ll have Tony Bourdain talking in your head constantly. The test though, is if Tony continues talking in your head long after you put the book down.

For me, Tony is now a constant voice, always offering his insight on what might be a great or a terrible meal, or even on the sunset now turning soft shades of purple and pink.

And that, ladies and gents, is why November is my favorite month. Tune in next month not only for the December ‘Palooza, but also for my year-end wrap up where I name my favorite books read this year. Good night, and keep reading!

Chuckabilly's Literary Lollapalooza October 2010 Edition (Halloween in late November, Yay!)

2010-11-18T12:46:00.000-08:00

This month we celebrate Halloween with a slew of horror tales, old and new, and a tale of Australia’s greatest outlaw…

This is Literary Lollapalooza, October Edition.

Books Read This Month:

A True History of the Kelley Gang by Peter Carey

John Dies at the End by David Wong

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

World War Z by Max Brooks

The Walking Dead Books 1 and 2 by Robert Kirkman

Books Acquired:

Fiction: Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock, The Ghost Writer by Robert Harris, Great House by Nicole Krauss

Non-Fiction: The Forever War by Dexter Filkins, Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen, and God’s Middle Finger by Richard Grant

E-Books: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Books Borrowed: A True History of the Kelley Gang by Peter Carey, John Dies at the End by David Wong, World War Z by Max Brooks, and The Walking Dead Books 1, 2, and 3 by Robert Kirkman

Currently Reading: Sunset Park by Paul Auster, The Walking Dead Book 3 by Robert Kirkman

Reviews of This Months’ Books:

A True History of the Kelley Gang by Peter Carey

I was turned onto Peter Carey by my friend Josh, who loaned me this book. While perusing books at a small bookstore in Adams Morgan, Josh located a book by Carey that he hadn’t read. “Have you read this guy?” he asked. I told him no, hadn’t heard of him. “He’s great. True History of the Kelley Gang. Good stuff.”

Thanks, Josh. This book is an Australian “western” all about Aussie’s famous outlaw Ned Kelley. Written first-hand as a journal by Mr. Kelley it recounts how he came to reach his final destination, that is, shot full of bullets by the police.

Written in Australian accent and vernacular, it takes a moment to adjust to the narrator’s tone, but just like Shakespeare, after a few moments you adjust and everything makes perfect sense.

Young Ned Kelley is oldest of a clan of 7; his father coming from Van Diemen’s Land is imprisoned in jail for most of his young life. His mother, a hardworking spitfire manages to sell moonshine and create a manageable living for her brood. Following a daring rescue where Ned saves a young child from drowning, the child’s father has Ned’s Da released from jail, but he is a shadow of his former self. Listless and without the motivation to leave the house, Mr. Kelley soon wastes away leaving the family even more alone and forlorn.

Ned’s ma begins a series of dalliances with suitors, one of which is semi-famous outback outlaw. As a favor, he takes Ned under his wing, teaching him ways to survive in the wilderness and procure a living by robbing others. Ned takes to this lifestyle exceptionally well, but soon tires of his mentor’s abuses. He strikes out on his own, always trying to do the right thing, but always coming down on the wrong side of the law.

The unfolding story follows Ned Kelley’s attempts to make an honest living while constantly fighting against the class system and the bad name he has inherited. As lively a western melodrama as McMurtry’s “Lonesome Dove”, this novel based on real situations is a fantastic read. Readers become entrenched in the lives of the characters, rooting for Kelley even when one knows the inevitable outcome. Funny, fresh and absolutely riveting, this is a hell of a read. Highly recommended.

John Dies at the End by David Wong

This book has been on my radar for awhile now. I keep my eye on the horror section always, trying to look for the next book that will scare my socks off. This one has a striking and original cover art featuring a severed hand scribbling warnings to the reader not to read this book. Clever that. Like I could resist that temptation?

John Dies at the End is probably one of the most original novels I have read in ages. The narrator, one David Wong, recounts the horrors that have befallen him and his friend Dave since encountering a drug that opens a doorway to other dimensions. The rest is literally all downhill from there.

This book is crazy. It is scary, and gory, and creepy, and hysterical. A book that refuses to take itself seriously, it unfolds horror upon horror with increasing amounts of dread and night-black humor. The thing is, David just a regular guy who finds himself in way over his head, and John…well, let’s just say John is the guy that takes the tab, smiles, and then asks what it was.

I laughed as much as I cringed, but then again I think death can be pretty funny. The humor here is as pitch-black as it comes, and the scares are real. Evoking images of Lovecraft, this book manages the seemingly impossible: it scares the pants off you even while you’re laughing at the ridiculous situations David and John find themselves in.

I can’t recommend this book enough. If you are a fan of horror, or just someone like me with a sick, sick sense of humor then this book is for you. I passed this on to a coworker and had the pleasure to sit at lunch while she laughed out loud repeatedly while reading the first few pages. (She thanked me for recommending it after finishing the book, btw.)

Oh, and DOES John die at the end? Sorry. You’ll have to read the book to find out. (Heheheh.)

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Frankenstein. It speaks volumes just saying the title. This book is so entrenched in our collective psyche that everyone knows the story even if they haven’t read the book or seen any of the movie adaptations.

I have always wanted to read this book, but never really found the right time. I have of course seen the classic films and the Kenneth Branagh directed opus that is much more faithful to the source material. But after reading Stiff by Mary Roach (see September’s ‘Palooza) the need to read this piece of gothic horror was refreshed in my mind.

I am glad to report that Frankenstein is as good a horror novel as any other I’ve read. (I was tainted on gothic horror after trying to read the awful claptrap that is Dracula.) Well written, with restraint and empathy, this is great storytelling.

A half-mad, and near dead Dr. Victor Frankenstein is discovered by a sailing expedition in the Arctic. While being nursed back to health he tells his harrowing tale, and what emerges is the great archetypal story we all know. The scientist who overreaches his bounds and creates life, without understanding the consequences. The monster, unaware of why he exists and why all humans shriek and run from his hideous appearance.

This is heartbreaking shit. A classic examination of the nature/nurture argument, the monster wants only to be loved and cared for, and when repeatedly jilted by society he lashes out with violence. Is he evil because he does bad, or has society turned him into a monster?

A great read that was heightened by the Halloween season; I read this on my Sony eReader and enjoyed this free eBook immensely. Another great benefit of the eReader? Free books. Oh hell yeah. I am so there.

World War Z by Max Brooks

I started reading this book the week of Halloween. To be absolutely clear I started this book the night of the downtown Silver Spring zombie walk, a tradition that consists of hundreds of people dressing up as zombies and staggering their way through downtown Silver Spring en route to a screening of Night of the Living Dead at the AFI Silver Spring.

So, in the midst of my very own zombie apocalypse I did what any self-respecting survivor would do: I boned up on zombie survival. I read World War Z by Max Brooks.

World War Z is the essential zombie novel. The one zombie novel you have to read if you were so inclined to read a zombie novel. Max Brooks, son of famous daddy Mel Brooks, is the pre-eminent scholar on all things zombie, having previously published The Zombie Survival Guide and the numerous offshoots of that particular cash cow. Here he turns his zombie fascination into a real-life tale of terror and desperation.

The book is an oral history of the zombie war: a collection of anecdotal interviews recounting the zombie uprising and ensuing death, destruction, and ultimate victory of the human race as told through the eyes of those on the ground. What results is a magnificent imagining of a real-life zombie apocalypse and the human response to such a threat. A global masterpiece that manages to place a zombie uprising amid significant global politics and policies, making each country and each society its own special case. China is not the U.S., and France is not Africa. Each country is unique in how it responds to a threat of utter annihilation, and Brooks captures each voice perfectly, displaying an amazing breadth of imagination and wisdom.

In what very easily could have been a throw-away zombie novel of the semi-humorous variety, Brooks does the opposite by making this very real, very visceral, and very important. I have to say I was surprised by this book. I expected fun, but what I got was so much more engaging. Thought-provoking zombie fiction? You must be kidding? Nope. This is it.

The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman

Zombie fever continues with this incredible comic book series by Robert Kirkman. Now an original series on AMC created by Shawshank Redemption wunderkind Frank Darabont, this collection of monthly zombie comics follows in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse.

The main character, Rick, awakes from a gunshot wound induced coma, to find himself alone in a zombie wasteland. He must survive, must find food, supplies, his family. He must be vigilant against the “biters” that are constantly a threat.

The comic book and the series follow the characters of Rick and the other survivors as they attempt to rebuild a life in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse. It is gruesome, and scary, and beautifully rendered in black and white illustrations by Charlie Adlard. The covers by Tony Moore are even more amazing. This is an ongoing comics series that publishes monthly, but I am late to the game so I am catching up by reading the beautiful hard bound collections numbered by Books. Each volume contains every full color cover and additional sketches.

I would also recommend picking up the Compendium that collects the first 48 issues together into one big, fat paperback edition.

And watch the AMC series! It is groundbreaking TV, unlike anything that has ever been offered by a network of cable entity. Frank Darabont is a genius and his handling of this comic book series is extremely well done.

That ends things for this very special Halloween edition of Literary Lollapalooza. A zombie nightmare of epic proportions, I hope yours was just as gruesome. Go and prepare yourselves for the zombiepocalypse! Happy Halloween! (Late!)

Chuckabilly's Literary Lollapalooza September 2010 Edition (Only two months late!)

2010-11-18T11:10:00.001-08:00

This is Literary Lollapalooza, September 2010 Edition and we’re here to think about death and get sad and stuff! (Cue music.)

Books Read This Month:

I am Number Four by Pittacus Lore

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Morbid Curiosity: The Disturbing Demises of the Famous and Infamous by Alan W. Petrucelli

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

Books Acquired:

Fiction: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wrobelewski, Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri, Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child, A Whole ‘nother Story by Dr. Cuthbert Soup, Beyonders by Brandon Mull, Crossing by Andrew Xia Fukuda

Non-Fiction: A Voyage Long and Strange by Tony Horwitz, 13 Things that Don’t Make Sense by Michael Brooks

E-Books:

Books Borrowed:

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, John Dies at the End by David Wong

Currently Reading: John Dies at the End by David Wong, Take the Cannoli by Sarah Vowell

Reviews of This Months’ Books:

I am Number Four by Pittacus Lore

This is a new Young Adult series that I had heard many great early recommendations for. I am Number Four is the first in a proposed trilogy titled The Lorien Legacies.

I am Number Four follows the story of an extra-terrestrial living on Earth. He is known as number 4, but wherever he lives he assumes a human name and tries his best to blend into society. He lives with Henri, his protector and guardian, who pretends to be his father. He’s really sick of moving around, and he’s just found himself surrounded by people that love him and support him. What’s the bad news? The ancient evil alien race that forced his evacuation from his own planet is tracking him, and they are hot on his trail.

Growing up can be hard enough, but Number 4 has it the hardest. He knows the first three are dead and now they are after him. They have to kill him in order to kill number 5. He wants to keep Henri and himself alive, but he’s just gained a best friend and even more important, he is in love. How can Number Four balance everything in his life, overcome the evil alien race coming to destroy him, and make sure he and his loved ones stay safe? You can only find out by reading this exciting YA sci-fi novel.

Not life-changing like The Hunger Games, but a worthy young adult novel to pass your idle hours.

Into the Wild by Jonathan Krakauer

Sean Penn’s film version of John Krakauer’s harrowing account of Christopher McCandless’ journey and subsequent death in the Alaskan wilderness moved me considerably. Along with the provocative sparse soundtrack by Eddie Vedder, Penn creates a heartbreaking account of brio and failure. I wept harder at the end of this movie than I have for most any other death in my life. So compelling is the story and so believable are the characters, that I wept out loud for such a sad and terrible death.

The source material, Krakauer’s Into the Wild, is a troublesome blend of biography, outdoor enthusiasm, and personal authorial insight and wisdom. It is as fascinating a read as it is a short, strange trip into another man’s life and death. While based on McCandless’s fatal trip into the Alaskan wild, the book at times is as much about Krakauer coming to grips with his own wanderlust and brushes with death, as it is about young idealistic Chris McCandless.

It is a meandering and diverting narrative, but when Krakauer focuses his attentions and just writes the story of the kid who gave his savings to charity, burned his money and backpacked into the wilderness, only to die a few months later, it is riveting. I can’t say I fault Krakauer his sidetracks and personal reflections. I have also had my days of wanderlust and my own need for solace. I connected deeply with the story of McCandless’s need to escape the “normal”. These personal anecdotes add insight into what might make someone face certain death in the pursuit of something larger than one’s self. However, the book is so detached from its human protagonist that it pales in comparison with Penn’s film, where he so deftly recreates the heartbreaking story of Chris McCandless’s fatal journey into the Alaskan wild.

I recommend this book. Highly. But I think you should add Penn’s amazing film to your Netflix que first. And then download Vedder’s incredible soundtrack. Then block out a good two days and just immerse yourself in this taut little narrative. It is SOOOO worth it.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Oryx and Crake is the first part of what is called the MadAddam trilogy. The second part, The Year of the Flood, was just released in paperback this past year. The third and final novel is forthcoming.

Set in a not-so-distant future Oryx and Crake is an inventive, dystopic novel that makes great hay out of current scientific and philosophic issues such as genetics and cloning. Oryx and Crake explores developments in science and technology such as xenotransplantation and genetic engineering, particularly the creation of transgenic animals such as "wolvogs" (with the appearance of domestic dogs, the viciousness of pit bulls, and the feral nature of wolves), "rakunks" (pet-like hybrids of raccoons and skunks), and "pigoons" (pigs with bodies shaped like balloons bred to grow extra organs for human transplantion). This society promoted an extreme commercialization of life, the commodification of sex and all forms of pornography, and exacerbated the gap between rich and poor. Oryx and Crake examines the social, economic, scientific, and ethical consequences of such technology.

Told from the perspective of Snowman, the last surviving member of the human race, the story takes place in a not-too-distant future where competing genetic engineering firms, in an effort to always have the leading edge in the industry, not only create new genetic models, but also engage in genetic sabotage by creating new viral strains and ultra-deadly forms of life.

We learn through flashbacks that Snowman was once a bright young man named Jimmy. Jimmy grew up in an ultra-consumerized society in which large corporations (largely in the pharmaceutical or genetic bent) house their employees on large compounds, walled off from the poor pleeblands on the outskirts of the compounds. Jimmy’s father was a scientist, an employee of HealthWyzer, a large genetic experimentation firm. His mother, an emotionally unbalanced woman, left him at an early age to protest and sabotage the large corporations.

Jimmy befriends a brilliant science student named Glenn, who later becomes known as Crake. The two friends, like all kids of a certain age enjoy watching all forms of pornography and death, both of which are available at their fingertips in a dizzying display of variations. Get tired watching bondage and torture? You can watch live executions. They also play a computer game called Extinctathon, in which players take on the role of an extinct animal. This game was created by a company called MadAddam.

We learn that Jimmy and Glenn have both fixated on a young girl in one of their favorite porn clips, and so many years later, Glenn, now known as his Extincathon moniker, Crake, has hired this girl (now a woman), as his personal mistress. Glenn, of course is also in love with the girl, and so begins a three-way love affair.

Crake, a top geneticist at one of the leading firms has started a new project: a race of uber-humans. They are genetically perfect: blond, well-shaped, hairless bodies, and devoid of emotion and hormones, and built to copulate only when in “heat”. He has also created a virus to destroy the human race, meanwhile building immunity into his perfect “Crakers” so that they will be built to survive.

The girl, now taking the Extinctathon moniker, Oryx, is not only Crake’s personal prostitute but also working as tutor to the innocent and childlike “Crakers”, teaching them how to use the natural elements around them and also about basic belief systems.

To say that things end badly is to put a rosy disposition on. Snowman is left the only human emissary and educator to a developing race of Crakers who don’t understand concepts like love and war. But the heart of the story is how Crake and Oryx got us to where we are, extinct but for one man, and the soured relationships that tread the path.

This is astonishing science fiction. Even going above and beyond such a title, it is an invigorated imagining of a very possible human future. Like Bradbury and Orwell before her, Atwood has created a world all its own that is at once believable and frightening. This is an addictive read that will keep you itching to pick it up and read a bit more. Great fiction writing! I can’t wait to read The Year of the Flood!

Morbid Curiosity: The Disturbing Demises of the Famous and Infamous by Alan W. Petrucelli

This book is a trivia lover’s dream! All about the many and diverse ways in which the famous (and infamous) kick the bucket; this is a cornucopia of gruesome human death. Covering many celebrity deaths, from the golden age of Hollywood to modern rock star overdoses; this book covers each death in short 1-2 page write-ups revealing all the gruesome details and salacious points of fact.

For instance, Jayne Mansfield was decapitated in a car crash in which her three children, including actress Mariska Hargitay, were sitting in the backseat. The book contains hundreds of factoids surrounding the deaths of celebrities and newsmakers, and is great fun (if you think death can be fun, that is.) Reading this urged me on to read more about death. (See, I really do think it’s fun!) So I picked up…

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

Mary Roach is probably the funniest person to ever write about the uses of the human body after it has expired.

Not that there’s much competition. Roach is a noted science writer that writes with a great deal of humor and pathos. In this book she seeks to explore the many, many ways that science has utilized human cadavers throughout the years.

From organ donors to crematoriums to crash test dummies Roach leaves no leaf unturned. She is thorough, funny, and fearless. I wouldn’t have believed I would have so much fun reading about human corpses, but Roach makes it seem not only normal and necessary to study human cadavers, she makes a compelling point to becoming an organ donor.

Her descriptions of 19^th century medical teaching laboratories brought back vivid images from Kenneth Branagh’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and urged me further to go back and read that classic novel, exploring descriptions of medical arenas populated with various human ephemera. The accounts of medical grave-robbing are as inspiring as they are horrifying.

Her research takes her from hospital teaching labs to stories of cannibalism, and she never shirks, never wilts. She is our envoy to the world of the dead, and she magically elevates a dead human being to a thing of honor, respect, and even awe.

I can’t wait to read more of Roach’s books. Science never seemed so fun!

That's all for this month's reading. Check in shortly for the October post where we rev up the death and gore quotient for this, our favorite of holiday seasons...HALLOWEEN! Bwahahahaha! Seriously, death is fun. Anybody? Buehler?

Stephen G. Fritz on the Soldiers of the Wehrmacht

2010-11-10T13:59:00.000-08:00

Robert McNamara once said, “War is so complex it’s beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend. Our, judgment, our understanding, are not adequate. And we kill people unnecessarily.” No one understands this more intently, or experiences this more profoundly, than the warrior on the field of battle, the soldier on the front line. World War II was not unlike any other war in this respect. The ordinary German soldier, the Landser, experienced this conflict as soldiers have experienced combat in other wars, both previous and subsequent. Fighting along the Eastern Front, however, was a much more brutal and violent form of combat than was seen in other arenas of the European Theater. To truly understand the World War II experience, one must study and explore this dimension of the conflagration.

Stephen G. Fritz, professor of German and European studies at East Tennessee State University, looks at the war from the German point of view in his article, “’We are Trying...to Change The Face of the World’—Ideology and Motivation in the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front: The View From Below”, printed in the Journal of Military History. He further explores the experiences of the German soldier in his book Frontsoldaten: The German Soldier in World War II. Although the book does look at the Wehrmacht as a whole, his primary focus is on the Eastern Front. Fritz examines the experiences and motivations of the soldier on the front lines and the physical, emotional, and psychological hardships that the average Landser endured.

Typically, when dealing with military history, the tendency is to take a top down approach. That is, many scholarly works deal with the overall generalities of war at the operational, command, and logistical level. Historians often overlook the personality of war. What makes Fritz’s work unique, and an important addition to the body of scholarly work on the conflict, is that he looks at things “from below.” Fritz believes that to truly understand war and combat, it is important to study and attempt to understand the experience of the common soldier, the front line troops who fought and died.

History from the top down tends to sanitize war. History often contributes to the romanticization of war and portrays combat in vague and abstract ways, ignoring the brutality and the physical, emotional, and psychological strain that constitutes the basis of everyday life for the soldier on the front. Fritz understands that the verisimilitude of war is actually to be found in “the common swarm life of mankind.” The common soldier has often been overlooked by history. He is at the center of events in war, yet the focus has tended to be at the top, with the soldiers looked upon as an “anonymous crowd that just receives orders.” To truly understand the vagaries of war, one must understand the common experiences of ordinary people. The study of the everyday life of the Landser is a study of the War in the East on its most basic level.

To this end, Fritz relies heavily on personal accounts of soldiers on the front, the voices of the Landsers themselves. He relies not on memoirs or recollections of soldiers long after the war was over, but rather on the words that soldiers wrote while they were there, fighting and dying. The stories, the triumphs and the horrors, that make up the core of Fritz’s work, come from the diaries of the Landsers and the letters that they sent home. Fritz views these letters and personal journals as the most intimate portrayal of the war available. These letters are not clouded by the fog of memory or by self-serving changes in the telling of events. War consists of incalculable individual emotions, experiences, and actions, and Fritz attempts to capture them in their most raw form. However, even in doing so, Fritz maintains a neutral tone. Fritz’s writings are about understanding, not casting blame or making excuses.

In “’We are Trying...to Change the Face of the World’—Ideology and Motivation in the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front: The View From Below”, (which is essentially the basis for the eighth chapter of Frontsoldaten), Fritz examines the motivations that drove the typical Landser to fight so tenaciously in the East, committing atrocities along the way and willingly following grievous orders with seeming enthusiasm. Fritz postulates that a combination of factors led to this facet of the War on the Eastern Front. One idea was that a new type of soldier had been bred from the changing model of warfare beginning with the trench warfare of The Great War. This new soldier was able to adapt at will to the ever-changing circumstances of combat and was harder, with a stronger constitution than the warriors of previous generations. He saw warfare in the same way one sees a job in peacetime. He, in essence, became a “day laborer of death.” This new soldier was harder, with a stronger constitution than the warriors of previous generations. He saw not only pain and carnage in war, but also gratification and beauty. Even in the face of devastating losses on the battlefield, this new breed of warrior, this modern Landser, did not suffer despondency, but rather a stubborn sense that he must continue to fight on

A second reason Fritz gives for the Landsers’ determination stemmed from a deep sense of camaraderie and community. In warfare, all social and class distinctions become moot, effectively leveling the odds and making equals of the soldiers on the front. War created unity, a sense of community, and common purpose among the Landsers. It was a sense that they belonged to something and were a part of something greater. When the fighting was at its most brutal, the Landser felt a “sense of responsibility for ones comrades, even if one no longer knew them.” This feeling of responsibility was felt not just for fellow soldiers, but for the people back home as well. Soldiers at the front were keenly aware of the situation in Germany and of the destruction caused by the Allied bombing, and felt that they must also fight for the people on the home front.

Ideology also played a key role in the actions of German soldiers on the front. The average Landser believed to some degree that the Nazi State had “redeemed the failures of World War I and had restored, both individually and collectively, a uniquely German sense of identity.” This belief was an inherent part of the idea of Volksgemeinschaft promoted by the Nazi regime, the idea that a national community existed among the German people that transcended social and class position. Many also believed in the Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy. Continuous barrages of propaganda bolstered these beliefs. This propaganda was highly successful because it was spread along the front soldier to soldier, not by officers in the rear. As the prospect of victory became dubious, the Landser on the front tended to look to the propaganda even more for inspiration and morale. Conditions in Russia served to reinforce the Nazi propaganda among the soldiers of the Wehrmacht. Upon entering Russia the soldiers viewed the famine and destruction wrought upon the people by Stalinist policies. Even working class soldiers expressed disgust towards what they saw as disparity and disillusionment among the people in what was supposed to be a workers’ paradise. As such, the typical Landser viewed Russians not as humans, but as animals. In this sense, the average German soldier on the Eastern Front believed that these “vermin” must be destroyed before they spread throughout the rest of Europe.

Fritz continues his examination of the experience of the frontline German soldier in Frontsoldaten: The German Soldier in World War II. The book, going further, examines the life of a German soldier on the front as an aggregate experience, examining the totality of the War from the beginning of training and indoctrination until the end of the ordeal. Again, Fritz uses letters and diaries to portray the common bonds of warfare as well as the idea of “combat as a deeply private experience.”

The life of a soldier begins with training. In Germany, this was no different. The Wehrmacht was perhaps the most well trained army of the time. It was this training that helped contribute to their doggedness in action. For future soldiers of the Wehrmacht, this training began in childhood. Young boys first joined the Hitler Youth, and next went to the Labor Service. The next inevitable step was the Wehrmacht. The Wehrmacht used intense degradation ceremonies designed to induce motivation and obedience. This approach was designed to prepare Landsers for situations where routine would save them both physically and mentally. This training produced the ability later to forge fighting units out of fragments of other units and have them operate successfully as a cohesive unit.

Fritz devotes most of the book to the actual combat experiences of the soldiers on the front. He demonstrates through their own words that combat can mean different things to different men. To some, war means chaos, while others find a sense of beauty and freedom on the field of battle. Other common themes are feelings of shock, despair, and of transformation. The book deals with the physical and psychological stresses of war. There are descriptions of the shock of seeing the first dead and feelings of loss of innocence. In the book, Fritz addresses the difference between the cinematic depictions of combat and actual life on the front, often tedious and mind numbing, interjected with intense periods of chaotic violence. To some Landsers, combat, and its associated sights, sounds, and smells, became as normal as everyday life back home. To many, thoughts became impersonal and loneliness began to set in; feelings magnified by the unfathomable magnitude of the war.

Fritz uses the writings of the soldiers themselves to chronicle the sights, sounds, and smells of battle and their emotional and psychological impact. Many Landsers described feeling an intense relationship with death during combat and a sense of being hunted. One Landser described the sensation: “Pitilessly, dangerously romantic, men stalking other men in a perilous contest of chance where only death proved triumphant.” Heavy artillery or aerial bombardment had a devastating psychological effect, and there was a feeling that fate ruled on the battlefield. Also vividly described are the visions of carnage and the effect that it had on the soldiers. Some described seeing the personal effects and mementos of the dead strewn across the battlefield. Others remarked that looking at the torn bodies of the dead, it was hard not to envision oneself in such a fashion. One sight the Landsers found particularly troublesome was the war’s “awful impact on horses.” Wounded horses, thrashing about in pain, would sometimes struggle to hold on to life even through several shots fired by soldiers trying to put them out of their misery. “Horses, ripped apart by shells, their eyes bulging out from empty red sockets,” haunted men’s dreams. The most prevalent feeling, however, was fear. “Fear was the real enemy...fear of death or of cowardice, fear of the conflict within the spirit...a simple fear of showing fear.”

Finally, Fritz demonstrates that even at the end of the war, things were not easy for the Landser. The ones who were lucky were returning to a land that was destroyed and a nation that no longer existed. Often, they had difficulty reassimilating into society. Generally speaking, they believed that they were good men and were unable to fathom why what they had done in war was considered evil. They had only done these things, after all, in service to their country. Many faced depression and disillusionment and lost faith in politics altogether. Countless men were returning home who felt that the years of the war had been lost or stolen from them, and they would never be able to get them back. This was especially true for those who remained in Russian captivity for years after the war. Some had never had a chance to begin a career and felt left behind in the progression of life. Mostly, though, there was an overwhelming feeling of the senselessness of the war.

War is a complicated, brutal, and trying endeavor. War creates complex, often conflicting emotions. Landsers on the Eastern front had the unique condition of being both perpetrators, willingly killing innocents and committing heinous atrocities, as well as victims, suffering physical and psychological traumas and “crushing anxieties of death and killing.” To the average Landser on the front, war was a complex endeavor. It could be brutal and horrific, yet strangely beautiful at the same time. By allowing the participants to tell their own stories, through letters and journals, at the time their emotions were most raw, Fritz demonstrates effectively the complicated and contradictory nature of war and the sentiments it begets. While there are some flaws in his approach, such as the heavy reliance on Guy Sajer’s The Forgotten Soldier, a work that is historically controversial, the end result is a moving and authentic account of the life of the average German soldier on the front lines.

Chuckabilly's Literary Lollapalooza August 2010

2010-09-19T23:27:00.000-07:00

This is Literary Lollapalooza, August 2010 Edition.

Books Read This Month:

Netherland by Joseph O’Neill

Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? by Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert

What is the What by Dave Eggers

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

Books Acquired:

Fiction: A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore, I am Number Four by Pittacus Lore, The Acid House by Irvine Welsh, Filth by Irvine Welsh, Marabou Stork Nightmares by Irvine Welsh, Robot Dreams by Isaac Asimov, The Spies of Warsaw by Alan Furst

Non-Fiction:

E-Books: Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

Books Borrowed: Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? by Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert, Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins, True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey

Currently Reading: I am Number Four by Pittacus Lore

Reviews of This Months’ Books:

Netherland by Joseph O’Neill

I actually read this book in July, but realized I had not included it after I posted July’s Lit ‘Palooza. I include it here, in apologia.

Netherland is a fascinating read. Told in first person by the narrator, Hans van den Broek, a Dutch-born and London-educated financial consultant who has found himself living in New York following the events of 9/11. At heart this is the story of a man living abroad in a strange place, and trying to find his place in a new home.

Hans is a likeable protagonist who connects with his home and with New York by playing cricket with a variety of working-class immigrants in Brooklyn. Among these cricket enthusiasts Hans meets Chuck Ramkisoon, a fast-talking, charismatic man with many capitalist interests and dreams of making cricket mainstream in America.

Told with the same thoughtful, well-paced plotting and vividly drawn characters one would find with Paul Auster or Don Delillo, this book is a slow burn. Slowly drawing you in, gradually enveloping you into the literary world, by the end you have lived in van den Broek’s distorted, alien, and ultimately life-changing Brooklyn. The character of Chuck Ramkisoon is a revelation, and when he is pulled, handcuffed from a New York reservoir many years later, it only deepens the mystery and lore you are already so entangled in.

At the beginning of Obama’s presidency in ’08 he was reading this book, and it has garnered numerous literary honors and awards since then. An eye-opening look at immigrant culture in the United States, this is a thought-provoking and deeply enriching novel.

Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? by Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert

This is not the first Batman tale by Neil Gaiman (those earlier tales are collected here as well), but this is the latest and most likely the last. In fact, it IS the last. The last Batman story that can be told: The story of his death.

As Batman attends a funeral populated by all his villains, friends, and allies after a long and storied career, he converses with an unseen female companion about all that he sees. Through different artistic styles, Gaiman and Kubert take a walk down memory lane reliving various important moments in the Dark Knight’s mythos by recreating the drawing and writing style of Batman creators throughout the 90 year history of the world’s greatest detective.

The result is a bittersweet farewell to a character that has had many lives. Of course the character of Batman can never really die, but that is the beauty of what Gaiman does here: by honoring Batman’s death, he is celebrating the immortality the character has attained.

Not the best Batman story ever told, but definitely the last…and a fitting tribute to my favorite of all comic book heroes.

What is the What by Dave Eggers

This is another tale about a U.S. immigrant, but in this case, he is Valentino Achek Deng, and he is a real person living and breathing in the United States.

Eggers, a brilliant biographer, as attested by his own autobiographical A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and the astounding Zeitoun, about an Islamic man in post-Katrina New Orleans. What is the What is the life story of a surviving “Lost Boy” of the Sudan. Told in the first person, but greatly enhanced by the author’s imagination, this biography is considered by author and subject to be a novel based on true events.

The story is a heartbreaking one of many trials and tribulations. As a warning it moves much slower than Eggers’ other works, without the optimistic zeal that keeps the others moving forward of their own volition. This is a bit of a slug-fest, but it is totally worth slugging through it.

Valentino Achek Deng is having a hard time adjusting to Atlanta. For one, his home has been just been invaded and robbed, and he has been beaten and tied up on the floor of his apartment, left for dead. As he awaits his roommate’s possible return, or a neighbor to hear his muffled yells or panicked kicks at the walls and door, he recounts the long and storied events that led to his being in his current state. That story involves constant starvation, fear, death, and the abandonment of family and of anything resembling home and safety.

His is a horrible story about great wrongs suffered upon a people by another. Sadly he is not alone. Thousands of others share his grief, and his horrific past. Like Zeitoun this is an incredibly true story about one man’s overcoming great odds to survive and live happily as an outsider in the United States.

Seriously, Eggers is one hell of a writer. If you haven’t read his others, go read Zeitoun. Then you’ll want to make your way through each of his other books. This is number three for me and there are two more novels to go. I can’t wait.

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore

I find it odd, but it seems like almost every book I read this month took place post 9/11, and is greatly shaped by that momentous day.

A Gate at the Stairs is a novel about a young woman coming of age in the Midwest in the year following 9/11. Tassie Keltjin, our young protagonist, is the daughter of a potato farmer in a small town, and has moved to the university town of Troy to attend college. It’s here that she starts working as a nanny for a glamorous and mysterious family, and finds herself drawn deeply into their world, changing her own life forever.

This is a great American novel about those complex years of early adulthood that we later look back on realize truly shaped who we later became. It is a novel about small moments that seem big at the time and is written with all the warmth and humor and firecracker wit one could hope for. Lorrie Moore is an incredible writer: an obvious love for words and their meaning, she attacks each sentence with equal ferocity. But unlike other writers, Moore’s intellectualism isn’t pretentious or self-flattering, but winning and warm.

A great book of sadness, and hope, and triumph, and loss A Gate at the Stairs is an astonishing novel about race and class in modern America. Just like real life, it is at turns hilarious and heartbreaking, and it will make you laugh and cry, often at the same time.

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Mockingjay is the third and final installment in The Hunger Games trilogy. Picking up immediately following the events of Catching Fire this book follows Katniss Everdeen as she tries to navigate the twisted world, at which she’s found herself the center. The colonies are in revolt, the Capitol is panicked, and Katniss finds herself being used as a pawn in revolutionary Colony 13.

I can’t say enough about this trilogy of young adult novels. Each volume picks up immediately on the heels of the last, and each one raises the stakes and the excitement. As usual there are many shocking deaths and we lose characters we’ve grown to love over the course of the series, but we also find ourselves locked in the middle of a tense love triangle as Katniss has to decide between the staid and loyal Gale, and her fierce protector in the games Peeta.

This novel is my favorite of the three, but of course don’t start here. Go back and start with The Hunger Games. They are truly some of the best dystopic science fiction novels one can find. Great characters, amazing action and suspense, this series will not disappoint!

Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

Wow. I really don’t even know where to start with this comic book super hero inspired coming of age tale cum love letter to a childhood Brooklyn.

Fortress of Solitude is many things. It is an amazing coming of age story following young Dylan Ebdus growing up on the streets of Brooklyn in the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s. The main story focuses on Dylan’s moving to Brooklyn and his assimilation into the neighborhood: wallball and stickball are cornerstones of his childhood. His father is an artist intent on creating infinite tiny paintings on top of film stock. His mother, a social hippie, intent on raising her son in a classless, raceless Brooklyn, becomes increasingly vacant until she is gone completely. Dylan is left with his newest neighbor, and his best friend Mingus Rude, the son of a lead singer of a 60’s soul group, The Subtle Distinctions. Dylan and Mingus’ lives intertwine with a homeless street person named Aaron X. Doily, who has been spotted flying from rooftop to rooftop in the dusky evening air. After a close call, the homeless bequeaths his magical ring to Dylan and he and Mingus begin flying themselves, taking on the identity of a superhero Dylan and Mingus begin fighting petty crimes with the newly found powers the ring bestows on its’ owners…when they aren’t tagging trains and walls with graffiti and getting high on marijuana or cocaine.

Crossing as many genres and styles as one book can, this is book is a tour-de-force. It is an amazing literary force to be reckoned with, demanding to be taken seriously with its serious social issues of homelessness, gentrification, race wars, class wars, drug use and addiction and heartfelt examination of what it’s like to be raised white in a largely black community. And then it punches through the walls of the normal and introduces super powers like flying and invisibility, and doesn’t treat them as gimmicks, but further terrain that must be negotiated in the tricky world of being human and nurturing adult relationships.

This is one of the most wildly divergent novels I have ever read. It is literally schizophrenic in its make-up. It is both a tough coming of age novel about growing up amid gang and drug influences in Brooklyn, and a fantasy story about a kid who inherits a ring from a dying superhero that bestows magical powers upon the person who wears the ring.

It is astounding fiction. The writing is unbelievably emotional and nostalgic. I have never been taken back to my own childhood as strongly as I was here. Lethem transported me right back to the days when I would get “yoked” by school-yard bullies, and he kept me completely entranced throughout like I was living Dylan and Mingus’ lives right along with them.

An important and devastating novel, this is incredible heights of fiction writing, teetering ever-so-close to the edge and always threatening to fall from the ledge of believability. Luckily Lethem knows how to walk a tightrope and he manages to pull off a heartbreaking, exciting fantasy without one false note.

Sickboy's Literary Lollapalooza, August 2010

2010-09-14T20:01:00.000-07:00

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.

Sickboy's Literary Lollapalooza, July 2010

2010-09-12T14:45:00.000-07:00

I won’t waste time with excuses here. Please forgive me if my reviews (if that’s what you want to call them) aren’t up to par. I don’t expect to remember every little thing when it’s been two months since I’ve read these. As always, "*" denotes a Pulitzer Winner. Let’s get July’s Lollapalooza underway!

BOOKS ACQUIRED JULY 2010
None (What? This can’t be right…)

BOOKS READ JULY 2010

Dead Man’s Walk, Larry McMurtry: The first book in the Lonesome Dove series is a look at the early careers of Texas Rangers Augustus McRae and Woodrow P. Call. It’s a pretty easy read, centering on the beginning of the long relationship between Gus and Call, and their first run-in with Buffalo Hump (and his son, Blue Duck), the Comanche leader that would prove to be the two Rangers’ biggest enemy during their careers, and Kicking Wolf, noted Comanche horse-theif (during Part One). The bulk of the book, however, focuses on the Rangers signing up to free Santa Fe from Mexico. Upon getting sold out by the General in charge of the “raid,” the Rangers are marched south through the deserts of New Mexico to be tried and executed, the “Dead Man’s Walk.” Obviously, since this book was written after Lonesome Dove, we all already know that Gus and Call survive, so I’ll just move on to the next book in the series…

Comanche Moon, Larry McMurtry: This book caused me problems. Not during the reading of this book, I actually thoroughly enjoyed it (We’ll get to the problems later in the post). Comanche Moon takes place during the twenty years between Dead Man’s Walk and Lonesome Dove. We’re given early stories of some of the characters we were initially introduced to in Lonesome Dove, and get the stories of some of the characters mentioned in Dove, but not actually included (spoiler: they’re dead during Dove). Again, the book is set in Austin, the Llano, and Palo Duro Canyon in west Texas. Buffalo Hump and Kicking Wolf are again central in causing grief and problems for Gus, Call, and the rest of the Rangers, as Buffalo Hump leads his final great raid from the Palo Duro south through Austin and on to the “Great Water.” We’re treated to the continued relationship between Gus and Clara, as well as introduced to the strained relationship between Call and the whore, Maggie, and her son, Newt. Blue Duck has a much more important role in Comanche Moon, and the book serves as a slightly less than decent fleshing out of the story arcs for those involved in Lonesome Dove.

Lonesome Dove*, Larry McMurtry: I have to start this by saying this is my favorite mini-series of all time in the history of EVAR. Well cast, well filmed, and a great tale of a cattle drive started on a whim. However, by the time I was 100 pages in to this book, I was ready to get in my car, drive to Booked Up in Archer City, TX, and wait there until Mr. McMurtry graced his store with his presence so I could berate him. That’s not to say that I disliked the book. I very much liked it. A whole lot, actually. BUT… Mr. McMurtry and his editors apparently didn’t feel they needed to go back and revisit this book when he wrote Comanche Moon. Not a single detail from the original book in the series was lined up with the details in Comanche Moon. And since I read them in order that they take place, it was infuriating while I was reading Lonesome Dove. I don’t know if it was laziness, or if McMurtry wanted to change the stories 12 years later while writing the prequel, but it bothered me so much I almost couldn’t get past page 150 of Lonesome Dove. My recommendation, if you’re going to read these books, is to read them in the order they were written, not in the order that they take place (and you probably shouldn’t read them one following the other, either). As this was a Pulitzer Winner, I had no choice other than to push forward and read it all. I did, and I’m glad I did, inconsistencies aside. Once I was able to stop my mind from focusing on the other books, I found Lonesome Dove to be one hell of a book. Gus and Call are two of the best American literary characters in history (in my humble opinion), and the sprawling epic nature of this book is phenomenal. The characters are well-imagined, the scope of the story is amazing, and it’s a wonderful journey from Texas to Montana (with a little Arkansas thrown in for good measure). READ THIS BOOK. Even if you don’t like westerns. I promise it’s worth your time.

The Cheese Monkeys, Chip Kidd: I wanted to like this book. I really did. But I didn’t have it in me. This book is a prime example as to why people that make their living designing covers for books probably shouldn’t try to write one. The story idea was alright. But this book has all kinds of problems. The narrator switches between three different names for another character, and I found it confusing. No problem if it’s happening as the story moves forward, and there’s an explanation, as far as I’m concerned. But when you’re switching between names multiple times in a paragraph (and sometimes in the same sentence) and you’ve never explained why the narrator doesn’t use just one name, it gets very confusing and frustrating. I spent the first quarter of the book thinking he was talking about three different people until I made the connection. I’m not stupid. If it took me that long to figure out that he was referring to one character with three different names, the writer and editors fucked up (I would not usually use that word in these posts, but that’s the best term for this: they didn’t make a mistake, they fucked up). The ending sucked (I’d love to find a more eloquent way of saying that, but there’s not. “Sucked” is the best word for it). I felt like Kidd was going for a forced existential ending, trying to make me wonder what it all meant (while ultimately deciding that it didn’t mean anything, as our actions don’t matter). Instead, I was wondering why I wasted my time on his miserable excuse for a book about a freshman art student in college and the junior female (in a relationship with an architecture student) that he has a crush on. I picked this book up because the blurbs on the back did their jobs: they made it sound REALLY interesting. It wasn’t worth the dollar I spent on it from the clearance shelf at the used book store. Not to mention the fact that I could have spent the time I took reading it doing absolutely nothing, and it would have been a better use of said time.

I'm Back! Literary Lollapalooza '09-'10

2010-08-07T14:14:00.000-07:00

Ladies and Gentlemen! It’s my triumphant return to Literary Lollapalooza. WTF? Where have I been? What have I been reading?

Since it’s been over a year since I last posted one of these, I guess I should just start with a list of everything I’ve read over that point. Maybe I’ll say a little something about it, maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll just tell you if it was good. Maybe I won’t.

As a quick reminder, I have a rule that I try to stick to, and it’s that one out of every four books I read needs to be a Pulitzer Prize Winner. Outside of that, I read whatever I want to.

I’m not feeling the need for a long introduction, so I’m just going to jump right in on it:

BOOKS READ OVER THE LAST 12 MONTHS

(** denotes Pulitzer Prize Winner)

Geraldine Brooks, “March”** - Don’t waste your time. One of the most dreadfully boring books I’ve ever read. As bad as Willa Cather.

Christopher Moore, “Fool”

Truman Capote, “Other Voices, Other Rooms”

Ken Grimwood, “Replay”

Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”

Bryan Burrough, “Public Enemies”

Chuck Klosterman, “Fargo Rock City”

Dan Brown, “The Lost Symbol”

A.J. Jacobs, “The Know-It-All”

Stanley Coren, “How Dogs Think”

Marilyn Robinson, “Gilead”** - As dreadful as “March.”

Edward P. Jones, “The Known World”** - The first Pulitzer Winner I’ve read since starting my rule that I liked.

Richard Russo, “Empire Falls”** - Excellent.

Nick Hornby, “Shakespeare Wrote for Money”

Joe Meno, “The Great Perhaps” – See Chuck’s write-up for this one.

Nick Hornby, “Juliet, Naked” – See Chuck’s write-up for this, as well.

Chuck Klosterman, “Eating the Dinosaur”

Michael Chabon, “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay”** - Absolutely loved this one.

Seth Godin, “All Marketers Are Liars”

David Cordingly, “Under the Black Flag”

It was a light year for me, as I was working on several other things and didn’t devote as much time to reading as I usually do. I’m working on fixing that. Stay tuned, in the next couple days, my Literary Lollapalooza from July will be making it’s way onto the Intertubes!

Literary Lollapalooza, July 2010 Edition

2010-08-06T14:00:00.000-07:00

Summer is winding down but there is still plenty of time to enjoy a good book on the beach. This is what I read this month. This is Literary Lollapalooza, July 2010 Edition.

Books Read This Month:
Catching Fire—Suzanne Collins
The Audacity to Win—David Plouffe
The Magicians—Lev Grossman
Around the World in 80 Days—Jules Verne
Scott Pilgrim V. 1-6—Brian Lee O’Malley
Lost at Sea—Brian Lee O’Malley

Books Acquired:

Fiction: The Unnamed by Jonathan Ferris, All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost by Lan Samantha Chang, What is the What by Dave Eggers, An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin, and Sunset Park by Paul Auster

Non-Fiction:

E-Books:

Books Borrowed: Scott Pilgrim V. 1-6 and Lost at Sea by Brian Lee O’Malley, and Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Currently Reading: What is the What by Dave Eggers

Reviews of This Months’ Books:

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Okay, so if you haven’t heard of the Young Adult Sci-Fi novel The Hunger Games (see the ‘Palooza from last month) then you have got some catching up to do. The Hunger Games is by far one of the best, most intriguing, and thoughtful young adult titles of recent years and this, the second installment of a trilogy (the final installment, Mockingjay is due out the 25th of this month) is an excellent continuation of the story.
Spoilers follow, so if you haven’t read The Hunger Games stop reading here. And do me a favor and go read it! The characters are growing and adapting. The plot is building. The excitement is ramping up. As unrest in the colonies grows, Katniss, our young heroine, finds herself being hailed as a symbol of rebellion. People are using the mockingjay pin she wore during the games as a secret symbol of their devotion to bringing down the corrupt Capitol. And the Capitol isn’t through with Katniss yet, either. It seems they are none too happy with how she forced their hand in the games keeping Peeta alive. She’s given hope to the colonies, and the Capitol will do everything they can to squash that hope.
I love this book because the characters continue to develop and the action is even more hardcore than the first. There isn’t as much death and heartbreak in this volume, but that’s a good thing: the balance is shifting. People are starting to fight back and take charge of their destinies. But trust me, the Capitol won’t go down without a fight. This thrilling fantasy tale ends with this months’ Mockingjay, due to hit bookstores on the 25th.

The Audacity to Win by David Plouffe

David Plouffe isn’t the man behind the president. He’s the man behind the machine that made the president the president. Plouffe was Obama’s campaign manager during his run-up to his most historic of elections, winning the presidency in 2008.
The Audacity to Win is Plouffe’s recollection of the campaign from its humble, underdog beginnings through the tensions of a hard-fought Democratic primary to the elation and glory of an election night win.
This is a book that wallows in election tedium, but as a insider’s view of the campaign that changed the way America votes it is a fascinating account of how a handful of people with a shared belief in a candidate and his ability to operate outside of political norms did everything against the book and came up big winners, and ultimately reshaped the face of the American electorate.
As an Obama supporter (and first time political giver and volunteer, much like most givers and volunteers in this election) I found this account fascinating and intriguing. Seeing how the minds behind the campaign reached the decisions they did, and followed the tactics they did to build the largest grassroots political campaign in American history is rather edifying.
Plouffe isn’t a natural born writer, and this will most likely be his only contribution to the world of letters, but this is an important story to share and I’m glad he did. Just seeing the nuts and bolts of the campaign is worth the read. But seeing candidate Obama taking the same slow, thoughtful approach to every issue that arises as he does everyday as our president is glorious. It seems we got the right man for the job.

The Magicians by Lev Grossman

This has been described as a Harry Potter for adults. And it is; in a way. But it’s also so much more than that. It is a meditation on youth and dreams and always wanting what you can’t have.
Grossman creates a magical world right in the center of modern day New York. 17 year old Quentin Coldwater finds himself invited to attend a prestigious school for wizards and is whisked away from the dreary everyday life he dreaded and into a fantastical place where he is special and unique and exceptionally adept. Here he finds everything he always wanted and gets sucked into the heart of a childhood fantasy that is much darker and dangerous than he could have ever expected.
A haunting, heartbreaking work of youthful excess, The Magicians draws from a myriad of popular children’s fantasies to create its magical landscape. As much a paean to The Chronicles of Narnia as it is to Harry Potter, mixed with the drunken ennui of Somerset Maugham, this one will make you nostalgic for simpler days and almost make you believe those worlds still exist.
I can’t say enough about this book. It is surprising and refreshing, and very much a fantasy world all its own. A great, propulsive read.

Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne

I downloaded this one on my eReader for free courtesy of Google books and following the emotional flaying I received from The Magicians, it sounded like simple good-hearted fun. I missed reading the Jules Vernes classics as a child, and as a Doc Brown enthusiast I always felt it my obligation to someday read them.
To say this is dated would be an understatement. But part of its charm is its provincial, British style. With clear, straight-forward prose Verne takes us on an around the world journey with British gentleman Phileas Fogg. Mr. Fogg has wagered the gentlemen in his social club that not only is it possible to travel the circumference of the globe in 80 days, but that he himself could do it at a moments’ notice. And when the gentlemen take his wager, he does so. At once. He hires French journeyman Passepartout as his assistant, and after quickly packing a bag or two the two men are off on an adventure spanning several continents and many countries. The adventure is constant as the travelers have to dodge the many predicaments that present themselves during their journey. To make matters worse, there is a London detective hot on Mr. Fogg’s trail, convinced he is a suspect in a recent bank robbery.
This is a fun fast read, but it can be stilted and hokey at times. If you can get past that this one is good for a lark.

Scott Pilgrim V. 1-6 by Brian Lee O’Malley

Scott Pilgrim (a.k.a Scotty Pils in my neck of the woods) is a bass-playing, bad-ass who is kind of clueless with girls and sucks at life in general. Oh yeah, and he’s Canadian. His gay roommate Wallace owns everything in the apartment they share. Scott doesn’t have a job, has no money, and he’s just started dating a high-schooler, 17 year old Knives Chou. She’s kind of obsessed and is the #1 fan of Scott’s band Sex Bob-omb. The other members of the band are Kim Pine on the drums (who Scott dated in high school) and Stephen Stills on guitar and vocals (the talent). Everything’s all well and good until a hot Amazon.com delivery girl, named Ramona with wicked style and roller blades, starts tearing through Scott’s dreams. And then he meets her. And falls in love with her. Only trouble is: In order to date Ramona, Scott has to fight and defeat her seven evil exes. Oh and he’s still technically dating Knives.
This is the most fun you can have while reading. I’m not kidding. Scott Pilgrim is the greatest graphic novel document of modern twenty-something culture probably in the ever. With frequent gamer nods and slacker mentality to spare, this is funny and fun and utterly charming. The cast of characters are instantly recognizable, and many will stay with you long after you’ve finished the last volume. But Scott Pilgrim himself is the best of the bunch: like a grown-up Charlie Brown he’s a blockhead and the guy that saves the day. He’s a clueless everyman just trying to get through the next 24 hours alive. Oh yeah, and get the girl as well.

Lost at Sea by Brian Lee O’Malley

I read this, O’Malley’s first published work, while in-between Scotty Pils 4 and 5.
Lost at Sea is a sweet coming of age graphic novel about shy 18-year-old Raleigh, a girl on a cross-country trip from San Francisco to her home in Vancouver. On this trip she is accompanied by three other teenagers she met accidentally after missing her train.
Raleigh is a sad quiet girl who believes she has no friends because her mother sold her soul to the devil when she was fourteen. She is saddened by her recent relationship with Stillman, which has left her hollow and empty. And she keeps seeing cats everywhere. Perhaps one of these cats has her soul?
At turns sad, funny, thoughtful and wise this is a great coming of age tale featuring some great drawings by O’Malley.

Lots of great stuff this month, and I’m already excited about next month and Summer’s end! Keep reading!

Literary Lollapalooza, June Edition

2010-07-07T07:47:00.000-07:00

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.

Literary Lollapalooza, April/May Edition

2010-06-05T20:57:00.000-07:00

Okay…so yeah, yeah, yeah I skipped a month and cheated by doing two months together. Big whoop. Wanna fight about it?

I read some really good things but found myself really short on reading time, so not as much as I’d like. I make up for it, though, by pimping. Seriously. Read on.

This is Literary Lollapalooza, April-May 2010 Edition.

Books Read These Months: Never Let Me Go by Kashuo Ishiguro, Y: The Last Man by Vaughn, Guerra, and Marzan, Bedwetter by Sarah Silverman, Becoming a Successful Manager by Grossman and Parkinson, The Next 100 Years by George Friedman, The Life and Times of a Transitional Boyfriend, Vol. 1 by Ryan E. Barbe, The Passage by Justin Cronin

Books Acquired:

Fiction: The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall, Netherland by Joseph O’Neill, Tell-All by Chuck Palahniuk, The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Magicians by Lev Grossman, Say You’re One of Them by Uwem Akpan, Faithful Place by Tana French, Another Thing to Fall by Laura Lippman, The Passage by Justin Cronin and The Zoo Story and Box by Edward Albee

Non-Fiction: Becoming a Successful Manager by Grossman and Parkinson, The Life and Times of a Transitional Boyfriend, Vol. 1 by Ryan E. Barbe, My Horizontal Life by Chelsea Handler, Confessions of a Cineplex Heckler by Joe Queenan, and Parting the Waters by Taylor Branch

E-Books: The Life and Times of a Transitional Boyfriend, Vol. 1 by Ryan E. Barbe

Books Borrowed: Bedwetter by Sarah Silverman

Currently Reading: The Great Perhaps by Joe Meno

Reviews of These Months’ Books:

Never Let Me Go by Kashuo Ishiguro

Never Let Me Go is a rare piece of fiction that is part science fiction, part literary coming-of-age tale, and part mystery. Set at an exclusive boarding school, the book centers on a trio of friends, tracing their friendship from grade school to adulthood. Theirs is a life of privilege, and every care is taken that their creativity be cultivated and encouraged. But there is a secret being hidden from them: a secret so dangerous and profound that its coming to light is sure to alter their lives forever.
Okay seriously, I can’t get anymore specific without giving away key plot points here. But trust me this is a hell of a book. Deeply engrossing and intriguing, it is a book that works on many levels at once. The mystery at its core that turns the entire premise upside down is sure to inspire moral and ethical debate, but the heart of the novel lies in the emotional reality of the deeply drawn and affecting characters.
That Ishiguro takes what could be a simple and effective science-fiction or mystery/thriller premise and recasts it as a heartbreaking and emotional coming-of-age tale is proof positive of his not-inconsiderable talents as a literary craftsman. Spellbinding fiction.

Y: The Last Man, Vol. 1 by Vaughn, Guerra, and Marzan

I have a confession to make, before this time I had never read Brian K. Vaughn’s now classic comic Y: The Last Man: I know, COMIC BOOK NERD FAIL.
What many consider to be one of the finest written comic book series in the EVER, and has subsequently made it into pop-culture history via its legion of adoring fans who have paid it honor in their own subsequent pop-culture entries (Chuck, Heroes, Lost…I’m looking at you.) How did I let it go so long without tracking it down? I honestly don’t know. What I can say is that it has a very interesting premise: Inexplicably, at the same instant on the same day every man on Earth dies suddenly leaving a world populated solely by women. Oh yeah, and one guy.
The comic book tells the story of this post-apocalyptic world and the lone guy trying his damnedest to stay alive despite vehement opposition from a sect of uber-feminists, while also single-handedly carrying the last Y chromosome on the planet. It is funny, terrifying, and absolutely pitch-perfect.
Vol. 1 is called Unmanned and it tells the beginning of the story, how we got be where we are and who the main players are going to be. Outside of that it’s pretty thin. I’m sure the characters and plotting will get better as the story goes along, but already at this early point it is a sharply drawn and vividly told intro to what I’m sure will continue to be an intriguing series. I look forward to following the adventures further.

Bedwetter by Sarah Silverman

I’m never sure with comedians what I’m getting when they publish a book. A memoir, a collection of comedy bits…a self-help book? (Paul Reiser…I’m looking at you.) It’s a dicey thing, always has been. Are they going to be honest and show they can be more than funny, even…dare we say…damaged? Are they going to publish their comedy acts by rote? Are they going to moralize and try to proselytize about how we can be more successful versions of ourselves? I was very pleased that the real Sarah Silverman showed up for her memoir.
That’s not to say she’s trying to be serious, either. Silverman is dangerously funny, and seems honestly unable to keep from being funny. The consummate class clown, she’s always looking for her way in: the first and best opportunity to say something ridiculous and outrageous. She needs the attention! Let’s not fault her that. We all have our foibles, if mine were near as entertaining as hers were I’d be amazingly obnoxious. Okay, more obnoxious than I already am.
The surprise is how emotionally tuned-in Silverman turns out to be: She is at once honest, self-critical, vulnerable, and defensive. She recounts her life and career with clear-eyed introspection, and calls herself on her own bullshit, her own hang-ups and idiosyncrasies. The result is a charming, informative, funny, and emotional memoir. Probably the last thing one would expect from the girl most likely to make a vagina joke. But then again, maybe not: the title is in reference to her uncontrollable problem of peeing the bed through all of her childhood years and even into her teens and adulthood. Living with something as embarrassing as chronic bedwetting is sure to put one on the offensive. Maybe that’s why Silverman is always the first to go just a little too far. In any case this is a highly enjoyable memoir, from her days as a hairy little bedwetting Jewess at summer camp, to her days as an underappreciated non-ivy-league SNL writer, Silverman is uncompromising and unflinching. I expected something fun and funny. I got so much more than that. I got a peek into Silverman’s real life. Oh, and dick jokes.

Becoming a Successful Manager by Grossman and Parkinson

This was homework. Go ahead and make fun of me. Jim and Carmen already did. I just wanted to read something that would help me feel more comfortable making this career adjustment in my life. So I got a “be a better manager” book. So what? Big deal!
Now, the truth is…this is pretty fundamental shit. Really. This book really is the reason people make fun of these books. Example: Listen to people when they talk. Really? That’s your advice? Show them you’re on their side. Ooo-kay. Be positive. Yep, sure thing. Lead by example. Puh-lease. This thing is a cliché wrapped in a joke beat over the head with good intentions.
Okay, so now that I know that people respond better when you treat them with respect I feel better about my abilities as a manager.
Skip it.

The Next 100 Years by George Friedman

I approached this book, in many ways, as a joke. A fun diversion. I mean really, Friedman honestly tries to predict the future 100 years on this planet in terms of geopolitics? It’s ludicrous. It’s ridiculous. Mexico will be our next major world power? Ok, sure. China is going to be a geopolitical non-entity in the next 100 years? Whatever.
At a glance Friedman’s foray into the future is an elaborate guessing game. A parlor trick involving crystal balls and ominous knocking on tables and walls. But then something interesting happens: It starts to make sense. Slowly, of course, bit by bit. But before you know it, you’re nodding along in agreement, certain that he’s got it dead right. This is the way the world is going.
Geopolitical forecasting is far from a science. It is far from flawless, and it often leads to incredibly ridiculous conclusions, which undermines its credibility, making it harder and harder to believe or buy into the stuff. Then you start reading further, and suddenly it’s not so hard to believe. Suddenly, Mr. Friedman is making a lot of sense.
I’m not saying there is merit to any of the claims in the book at all: on the surface it all seems rather inconceivable. But you never know. Maybe he’s right.
I really enjoyed this book, and please don’t try to convince me one way or the other, I enjoyed it. Let’s leave it at that. I think in the end it got me thinking about world politics in a way I hadn’t been thinking previously. I really don’t believe any of it, per se. But I like the thought it inspires, the conversations it encourages, and the questions it urges.
Maybe in the final analysis, it is not the answers we should be seeking, but the dialogue. A fascinating read, nevertheless.

The Life and Times of a Transitional Boyfriend, Vol. 1 by Ryan E. Barbe

THIS. IS. THE. BEST. BOOK. EVER. WRITTEN.

Go buy it now!!! This is the link for the lowest price. (You eReaders out there can get it for $3.00!) (http://www.authorhouse.com/Bookstore/BookStoreSearchResults.aspx?SearchType=smpl&SearchTerm=ryan%20e%20barbe)

Okay, seriously. The first four pages of this book are the best I’ve ever read…or wrote. Okay, so I’m shilling for my friend Ryan here. But to be honest I wrote the forward to this memoir/travelogue, so in all honesty I should be shilling.
This collection of short essays is a jumble of recollections, memories and running commentary on various travels and exploits Mr. Barbe has encountered during his time on this planet. It’s good plain fun. It’s a fast read and an enjoyable one. The stories range from a short one or two page ramble to a full-fledged travelogue through Tennessee whiskey country. It’s filled with delightfully colorful characters, most of which I have the honor (and sometimes shame) of knowing. Myself included.
Just do me and my friend Ryan a solid and buy the book. It’s cheap, it’s entertaining, and you get to read the first book of a very dear friend of mine. Spoiler alert: Me and President Dubya appear in the same story! Oh yeah, and those first four pages? Dynamite, I tell ya. Pure literary gold.

The Passage by Justin Cronin

You’ve all heard the buzz on big books before they’ve come out. The papers are always touting the next BIG THING: The next blockbuster that you haven’t even heard of yet. Avid readers, prick up your ears: If you haven’t heard of it yet, The Passage by Justin Cronin is THAT BOOK.
This hotly touted new title has garnered Mr. Cronin a multi-million dollar deal to flesh out a trilogy of books continuing the story, and Ridley Scott has optioned the film rights. And it hasn’t even been published yet. The Passage is set to drop next Tuesday, June 8. And ladies and gents, run do not walk to your local Borders superstore and pick up this hefty tome because this thing is going to be huge.
I first became aware of this book last November when I attended Times Talk Live with Stephen King and Janet Maslin. In the interview Ms. Maslin asked King what books he was excited about, and he said there was a new book by a young guy named Justin Cronin that was incredible. He called it, way back then, saying this thing was one of the best things he’d read, and that he was excited because it would be coming out this summer. Well folks, summer is here. And…wow.
The Passage is an epic sci-fi/horror novel most easily compared to King’s opus The Stand. Starting at a point a few years ahead of us in the future (but basically modern day) we see the creation of a top-secret military weapons operation and how it goes horribly dreadfully wrong. I know, not really new ground there, but what Cronin does with the premise is astounding. Spanning generations and multiple sets of characters that are wholly unrelated, this is epic storytelling unlike most anything being written.
At its most basic The Passage is a biological vampire tale much like The Strain or Patient Zero, where vampires are created by a viral strain (here they are called simply virals. Or smokes. Or sticks. Read the book, you’ll get it.) But where this novel exceeds its peers is in the scope and vision. We see our world. We see our world die. We see the remnants of a world in chaos. And then we see the world reborn. At 700+ pages this is a pretty hefty beach read, but you won’t find a more engrossing and engaging beach read this year.
Cronin is a highly-skilled writer and his words flow effortlessly. He deftly balances character and action and finely-hewn details to create not just a believable fictional world but several. Friends, we have seen the arrival of a major new voice in fiction.
What else can I say? Buy this book. Trust me. You will thank me for it.

Literary Lollapalooza, March Edition 2010

2010-03-31T19:35:00.001-07:00

Spring has arrived and with it comes variety! Ah, the spice of life. How wonderful to have strange little oddities, unexpected beauties, and yes, even horrendous wastes of time. You see, a wise person once said “You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the Facts of Life.” Sometimes a soul-deadening torturously boring book is just what you need to kick-start better decision making in the future. Welcome Spring!

This is Literary Lollapalooza, March 2010 Edition.

Books Read This Month: 90 Classic Books for People in a Hurry by Henrik Lange, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, Lobby Hero by Kenneth Lonergan, Osama Van Halen by Michael Muhhamad Knight, Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

Books Acquired:

Fiction: The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham

Non-Fiction:

E-Books:

Books Borrowed: Never Let Me Go by Kashuo Ishiguro and Y: The Last Man by Vaughn, Guerra, and Marzan

Currently Reading: Never Let Me Go by Kashuo Ishiguro

Reviews of This Month’s Books:

99 Classic Books for People in a Hurry by Henrik Lange

This is a graphic novel with the conceit that it will relay the gist of 99 classic and genre favorite books in single page, 4-paneled illustrations. Each book in 4 simple, illustrated panels. The results are mixed.
It’s a great concept, and most any book lover will get a kick out of it. Just don’t take it as a cliff’s notes version, as most summaries are either wildly inaccurate, simplified to a fault, or changed slightly to make a funnier entry. Sometimes this book-as-a-one-page-joke formula falls flat and produces some pretty lame entries. But others are inspired, inventive, funny, and sometimes very silly. My favorite is The Bible, but Master and Margarita, and 2001: A Space Odyssey are also very good. The bright points keep you moving along, and trust me this is a very fast read. A one-sit read if ever there was one.
It’s not the height of literature, or the height of graphic novels, but it’s a fun and whimsical distraction, and it may even inspire you to pick up one or two if these great classic novels. Any thing that might get you to pick up a copy of Bulgakov or Kafka, I can whole-heartedly endorse.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

Carson McCullers wrote this, her debut novel, at the age of 23 in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1940. It became a literary sensation, skyrocketing to the top of the bestseller lists in 1940. McCullers would go on to write several more novels highlighting the plight of the oppressed, and Hunter gained its place in the pantheon of great American novels.
At the heart of the story is John Singer, a deaf-mute, whose deaf-mute mentally impaired companion gets committed to an asylum. Singer moves into a room at the house of the Kelly’s. Young Mick Kelly, daughter of the Kelly’s, is a teenager in love with music and seeking to fit in. She frequently visits the bar run by Biff Brannon, where we meet Jake Blount, an alcoholic labor agitator. Jake becomes friends with Singer, cleans up and starts working at an arcade. The Kelly’s maid is Portia, a young black woman, whose brother gets arrested and imprisoned, and her father is the highly-educated and idealistic Dr. Powell who anchors the African-American community with his community dinners and awards for best essay written by a black teenager.
I am certain that at one time in this country this was considered a shocking vision of race and class that shook people to the core. In my heart of hearts I believe that. Why else would so many people praise it as a masterpiece? Sadly, it is a master-piece-of-shit (ya, see what I did there?). This book has not aged well. At all. Mostly it is about the conditions in the south that lead to racism and of fat cats taking advantage of the working class, this reads today as overly romantic, racist, ignorant, Marxist claptrap. We not only have a (black) character named Karl Marx, we have a character whose soul purpose is to spout the Marxist philosophy. “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” This quote gets reiterated a hundred times. Oh! And then there’s the black characters who are written in uneducated, ‘black talk’: “Nothing us could do would make no difference. Best thing us can do is keep our mouth shut.” Seriously. Oh, and the coup de grace is when respected old Dr. Powell sits thinking about how much he wishes he were white, oh to have fair skin, and thin lips, etc.
The fact that I slogged through 1/3 of this horrendous nightmare of a book before giving up and putting it aside is a testament to either my stupidity or my stubbornness. In the end it ended up taking up 2½ weeks of this month, so I’m sorry if I’m a bit bitter. I should’ve listened to Jim when he said, “Why are you reading that? It’s awful. Life is too short to read bad books.” Too true, Jim. Life IS too short to read bad books, even if I sometimes think I need a challenge. Trust me folks, pass this “classic” by.

Lobby Hero by Kenneth Lonergan

Okay, so this was homework for class, but someone a few months ago asked why I didn’t read more plays and now I have. So there. You’re welcome.
Lobby Hero is primarily about two characters, Jeff a twenty-something security guard in a Manhattan hotel lobby, and William, his uptight African-American supervisor. The play takes place entirely in the lobby of said hotel, and unravels as we discover more and more about the characters. Jeff is a self-proclaimed “fuck-up” who got kicked out of the Navy for smoking pot, got himself in deep with some loan sharks after losing big in Poker, and is now living in an apartment with his brother and his brother’s wife. He hopes to start paying his brother rent, but really wants to get out on his own, and he desperately wants to feel like his life has meaning and worth. Meanwhile, William is a self-made man. Through hard work, clean-lined ethics, and a no-nonsense take on following the rules he has risen to the position of Captain, the youngest in the company to ever achieve that. But William has a brother, and his brother has just been arrested for some really bad shit. And his brother has named him as his alibi. Two cops, one a hot superstar, the other a female rookie round out the cast of characters and help bring these secrets and desires crashing down around all of their heads, and none will ever be the same again.
The character is king with Lonergan, whose film You Can Count on Me was a breakout indie hit a few years back. Story is secondary to character, with the plots and subplots building solely out of the motivations and levels of the characters, and this play is an actors’ dream. Lonergan gives the characters nuance and so much pathos that it makes building a character an act of careful unpacking and assembling. This one gets my stamp of approval.

Osama Van Halen by Michael Muhammad Knight

Osama Van Halen is part sequel to Knight’s breakout underground Muslim punk-rock novel The Taqwacores, part autobiography, part metafiction, and part crazy delusional punk rock sojourn across the American landscape with a giant machine gun.
Knight, whose Taqwacores launched a Muslim sub-culture, plays fast and loose with the rules here. It’s more like a short story and essay collection than it is a novel. Threading all of the tales together is Amazing Ayyub, punk rock hero of Taqwacores, who along with Rabeya, the burka-wearing feminist Muslim, kidnap Matt Damon and are holding him hostage. They demand that Hollywood depict Muslims in a more positive light. They want just once to not be portrayed as al Qaeda steretypes. Meanwhile Ayyub, the amazing one, sets off on a personal mission to rid the world of a Muslim emo band by the name of Shah 79. Armed with a cartoonishly giant machine gun Ayyub traverses deserts and plains, often invisible, and along the way he escapes flesh-eating zombies in a mosque off the highway, gets rescued by taqwacore zombie-killer heroes The Kominas, and meets up with some pychobilly jinns. And to confuse matters more Michael Muhammad Knight enters the story as a character and occasionally as the author commenting on the characters and sequences as they occur.
This is a hell of a good time. I don’t know what it is, but I like it. For fans of crazy punk-rawk fiction, it doesn’t get more punk-rawk than this. While making homage to his own characters, he manages to create something wholly unique and original. Trust me, if you want to read this, you know right now. If Muslim emo bands getting massacred and Muslim zombies don’t get you excited, this is not for you. For the others of you (and you know who you are), order it now.

And now, for something completely different…

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize for this, her debut collection of short fiction. A reading club favorite since its publication, it’s not the sort of book I gravitate towards. However, as providence would have it, I found it for really cheap on a clearance rack. Cut to several months later: I am finishing Osama Van Halen, looking for something to refresh and cleanse my palette. Interpreter of Maladies seems to fit the bill.
From the very first story I was engrossed and engaged with Lahiri’s remarkable prose. Her writing is elegant and precise, and yet moves with the fierce yearning of love. Her characters are almost all Indian, most Indian-Americans, (Lahiri herself is of Indian descent, born in London and raised in Rhose Island), and yet despite their sometimes exotic Eastern locations and customs, these stories aren’t foreign or alien at all. These stories take simple everyday slices of life from very average characters and reveal the deeply woven reality of these characters’ lives, making them much larger than life. Much like our own lives are so immense and deep and complicated to ever be simple, these stories showcase a literary talent who is at the top of her game. From “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine” in which a little girl witnesses war and partition in Pakistan through the eyes of an older visitor, to “Sexy” in which a young woman enjoys playing the part of the kept mistress to a married man, each story is wholly unique and different, each one an entire world of its own.
My favorite story of the collection, “This Blessed House” is the story of a young couple, recently married. Theirs is the product of an arranged marriage, and so a few months in they are still getting to know one another, their quirks and idiosyncrasies. The new house they have purchased and moved into is a bit of a fixer upper, but they are ready for the challenge and look forward to having a home that is uniquely theirs. But free-spirit Twinkle has made a new game of treasure-hunting. It seems the family that lived in the house previously was devout Christians, and the couple is finding things all over the house. Twinkle begins earnestly searching for Christian curios, and she proudly displays them on the mantel, much to the chagrin of strait-laced Muslim Sanjeev. As the Christian artifacts accumulate, so does the tension in the house, culminating in a house-warming party where drunken guests join in the search and Sanjeev reaches a turning point.
This is beautiful and warm prose that gently urges you to keep reading. And when one finishes, you won’t be able to resist diving into the next irresistible world. An incredible debut collection, this is the type of book that as soon as you finish it you want to tell somebody else about it. Don’t resist that urge.

Well, that’s all for March. A bit of a downer of a month, but what a way to finish it! Until next month, keep reading.

Literary Lollapalooza, February 2010 Edition

2010-03-01T18:23:00.000-08:00

It is February…a famous month for lovers, but we instead turn our gaze inward. This month, by complete accident I assure you, we discuss four separate tales that examine the search for self, (with some film criticism thrown in). In a month where “who am I” supersedes “who am I with”, here are some great Narcissistic puzzlers.

This is Literary Lollapalooza, February 2010 Edition.

Books Read This Month: Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, Point Omega by Don DeLillo, The Moment of Psycho by David Thomson, Funny Misshapen Body by Jeffrey Brown, and Horns by Joe Hill.

Books Acquired:

Fiction: The Professional by Robert Parker, Perforated Heart by Eric Bogosian, All the World’s a Grave by John Reed (play)

Non-Fiction: War by Sebastian Junger

E-Books:

Books Borrowed: Point Omega by Don DeLillo, 90 Classic Books for People in a Hurry by Henrik Lange

Currently Reading: 90 Classic Books for People in a Hurry by Henrik Lange, McSweeney’s Mammoth Book of Thrilling Tales edited by Michael Chabon

Reviews of This Month’s Books:

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

Murakami has been on my radar for quite awhile now. One of those writers I hear people talk about, and file it away in that “someday” folder in my head. I wasn’t sure where to start and my friend Kate suggested Kafka. So, thanks Kate!
Kafka on the Shore tells two interrelated but distinct stories, alternating between chapters. The odd chapters tell the story of 15-year-old Kafka Tamura who runs away from home to avoid an oedipal curse. His father, a successful sculptor who never showed much love to Kafka, told him that one day he would kill his father, and sleep with both his mother and sister. Kafka sets out to make a new life for himself. He finds shelter in a quiet private library in Takamatsu and settles in until police start looking to question him about a recent murder.
The even chapters focus on an old, mentally handicapped man named Nakata. Nakata lives on a subsidy from the state and, because of his unusual ability to talk to cats he makes extra money by finding lost cats for people in the neighborhood. A search for a particular neighborhood cat leads him out of familiar territory and into a road adventure with a truck driver named Hoshino. The unlikely duo cross the miles, encountering many odd characters, until they find what they are looking for.
Kafka and Nakata’s fates are intertwined, and we are certain from the start that somehow these two characters are very important to one another. Written in a heightened style, mixing reality with metaphysical planes, Kafka on the Shore reads like a strange but engrossing dream. With fun characters, pop culture references, music, fish falling from the sky, and talking cats this book is one of a kind. A great, fun read that’ll leave you puzzled and wanting to read it again. Since finishing Kafka it has lingered in my head, and I think of the characters like old friends.

Point Omega by Don DeLillo

Don DeLillo’s latest novel, released February 2, is another short and brisk novel of surprising force. DeLillo’s lean prose is as spare and athletic as ever, weighing in at only 117 pages, it is a breathless and energetic read.
Jim Finley is a middle-aged filmmaker who has an idea about a film: it will be one long, continuous take of a man holding forth, talking about whatever comes to mind. That man is Richard Elster, a former U.S. defense consultant for the Bush-Cheney administration. A sort of conceptual strategist for the Iraq war, Elster tells Finley he wanted a “haiku war”, “a war in three lines”. Finley is trying to woo Elster for his film and Elster seems to just want company. The two men spend a couple of weeks at Elster’s desert hideaway talking, two men laying bare their souls. Elster says that they are reaching their omega point, an idea that suggests an eventual leap out of our biology, as Elster puts it, an ultimate evolution in which brute matter becomes analytical human thought. DeLillo gives us a sense of foreboding, that the two men are headed towards tragedy. Soon their solitude is interrupted by the appearance of Elster’s twenty-something daughter, Jessie. The tension between the three of them ratchets up, sending the book towards its ultimate tragedy.
Bookending this story is the first and last chapters, where an unknown male character stands silently in a museum watching 24 Hour Psycho, where Hitchcock’s film Psycho is slowed down to play over the course of 24 hours, making each slow mili-second of the film its own strange piece of art. DeLillo attended this exhibit while it was at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. It serves to examine how time and space changes the meaning of the smallest action.
DeLillo is a master of those tiny human moments that add up to make a life. Both profound and shattering, Point Omega is a breath-taking work about the struggle to reconcile the soul with its surroundings, and to understand the scope of space and time.

The Moment of Psycho by David Thomson

And speaking of Psycho…

David Thomson is a film critic and historian, among the foremost in the field. His knowledge of film is formidable to say the least, and here Thomson turns his keen eye on Psycho directed by Alfred Hitchcock, citing it as a turning point in American cinema.
Thomson’s writing is fantastically off-the-cuff and highly verbose. He starts off with a brief history lesson, to place us in the cultural context of the moment, listing pre-production issues and casting decisions as well as Hitchcock’s recent filmography. But where Thomson’s razor-sharp little book really finds its feet is in the cultural significance of the film, both on the business of film itself (Hitchcock’s lucrative back-end deal was among the first of its kind) but on movie-going audiences as well. With vivid detail, but with none of the stuffiness one might get from a film professor, Thomson recounts not only the making of the film, but how it changed and continues to change film and the audiences that watch film. Thomson understands that the “moment of Psycho” transcends the film and has greatly shaped film, and America itself, in the 50 years since its release. (As a fun bonus, Thompson brings the book full circle by mentioning at the book’s conclusion, the art exhibit 24 Hour Psycho, mentioned previously in Point Omega.)
The Moment of Psycho is a great book for film lovers or anyone who wants to understand the giant cultural shift that helped to define modern cinema.

Funny Misshapen Body by Jeffrey Brown

Funny Misshapen Body is a memoir drawn by cartoonist Jeffrey Brown. Along with his other titles like Clumsy it tells the story of Brown’s formative years, growing up with Crohn’s disease and overcoming art school and the need to be a “serious artist”. Told in short ten page vignettes based on various themes, Brown’s crude yet highly detailed cartoons make up a scattered, meandering personal history. Brown’s great gift is his ability to tell a story in a very small hand-drawn square. The amount of detail he manages to squeeze in to those little 2-inch squares is astounding, never failing to connect one instantly with their own awkward childhood, or hard-partying college days. The fact that this memoir is practically told without words (the text never overtakes a frame, and is always a tiny portion of the 2-inch square) is a testament to Mr. Brown’s tremendous talent.
Funny, thought-provoking, and at times melancholy and nostalgic, this is a great quick little read, but one you will want to spend hours studying those dazzling, crudely drawn little squares. Also, Brown includes a vignette which he is writing and publishing Clumsy, so it feels, in a way, like you’re reading the making of the book you’re reading. Ooh, how Meta!

Horns by Joe Hill

This is the second novel by Joe Hill (Heart Shaped Box), declared by many to be the new voice of supernatural thrillers. I haven’t read his 1st novel, or his collection of short works (20th Century Ghosts) but they have both been on my reading list since they were published. I picked up the ARC of Horns, published in hardcover February 23, and I couldn’t resist this fiendish little book.
Horns is the story Ignatius Perrish, or Ig to his friends, who wakes up after a night of drunken debauchery to find that he has grown horns. The devil kind: growing right out of his forehead. He also finds that the horns have an unexpected effect on people: they all want to tell him their deepest, darkest desire and they want him to tell them it’ll be okay. Like the mother of a screaming brat, who tells him “I’d love to kick her in her spoiled little ass, but I’m worried about what all these people would say if I hit her. Do you think…?” He says, “No.” Or his grandmother who tells him, “When I look at you I want to be dead.” Why? “Everyone stares at me. They all know what you did,” she tells him. You see, a few years earlier Ig’s girlfriend Merrin was brutally raped and beaten to death. He was the prime suspect, but due to a lack of evidence an expensive family lawyer was able to get a mistrial. Popular opinion, however still laid the blame solely on Ig’s head. Depressed, heartbroken, and socially unmoored, Ig began a downhill spiral of self-abuse culminating in that terrible morning and his brand new horns. The mystery, of course, is if Ig didn’t kill Merrin, then who did? And is that person still out there? As Ig looks for the truth, the book builds toward the inevitable: some hellish revenge to be meted out.
Hill writes with jet-black humor and a razor sharp wit, reveling in the worst that we can be. This is a nasty piece of fiction, ruthless and unflinching, as bold a look at our darker natures that has been written in recent years. It careens towards the end like a death-proof hotrod, muscled, and growling through the turns. It’s unpleasant. It’s not religious. As a matter fact, it’s downright blasphemous. But it’s fun. In that scary, let’s turn off the lights and see what might be lurking, kind of way. If you like your thrillers dark, you could do a far sight worse than picking up Horns. It seems that Stephen King guy might have some competition…

And that ladies and gentlemen, brings us to the end of February. A good month with some very eclectic choices, but I was still able to find a common theme. Don’t expect that to happen again. Thanks to everybody that keeps coming back! Tell your friends.

Until next time, keep reading!

Literary Lollapalooza, January 2010 Edition

2010-02-01T07:59:00.000-08:00

Another decade begins, and I attempt to chronicle yet another year of my reading habits. This isn’t your typical book review blog, and it isn’t just a reading list. Ladies and gentlemen, this is everything I read this month and what I thought about each one…

This is Literary Lollapalooza, January 2010 Edition.

Books Read This Month: House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb, The Body Artist by Don DeLillo, and Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff.

Books Acquired:

Fiction: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Copeland, My Education by William S. Burroughs, God Hates Us All by Hank Moody

Non-Fiction: Likewise by Ariel Schrag, Reach of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman, Pillar of Fire by Taylor Branch, I Was Told There’d Be Cake by Sloane Crosley, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue by John McWhorter, Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

E-Books:

Books Borrowed: The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb, Point Omega by Don DeLillo

Currently Reading: Point Omega by Don DeLillo

Reviews of This Month’s Books:

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

House of Leaves has been a cult phenomenon and bestseller for years now. Released in 2000 by Pantheon Books, it had already built up a bit of a cult status by being gradually released over the internet before publication.
House of Leaves is an odd book. It is several stories told at once. The main text is a scholarly dissertation about a documentary film called The Navidson Record written by an old blind man, recently deceased, named Zampaño. This text is found by an LA tattoo-shop apprentice by the name of Johnny Truant. The pages, locked away in an old trunk, become young Johnny’s obsession as he edits the manuscript, writing his own thoughts and experiences in the footnotes of the text. The text is then further edited and commented upon by (we assume) multiple editors at the publishing house. The first problem with the manuscript: The documentary The Navidson Record doesn’t seem to actually exist. In fact, many of the people who are quoted in the text, among them famous writers like Stephen King and Anne Rice, and literary critics like Harold Bloom claim to have never met Zampaño or ever even heard of the film or the people the film chronicles.
The story of the film is that an award-winning photographer, Will Navidson, moves into an idyllic country home in Virginia to settle down with his common-law wife and two children only to discover that the house is, when carefully measured, actually larger on the inside than it is on the outside. The film starts out chronicling the leisurely family interaction in their new home but soon becomes an exploration of the house that begins to develop rooms and doorways that weren’t already there. The labyrinth that the house reveals seems to mirror the emotional lives of Navidson and his family, and the pages that follow as the maze is explored and those walls keep on shifting is harrowing to say the least.
Included are film and audio tape transcripts from Navidson’s brother Tom, interviews with participants like Navidson’s partner Karen, and even a series of letters written to Johnny Truant from his institutionalized mother, from the Whalestoe Institute (also published as a stand-alone volume called The Whalestoe Letters.) Along with photographs, sketches, poems, extensive foot-notes, and a maddening series of puzzles and codes embedded in the text (and footnotes) makes this a wholly encompassing read.
I found myself reading this book compulsively and obsessing over every little detail, lest something should be missed. It took me nearly three weeks to read the damned thing and it dominated my thoughts for that period of time. Upon completion I still hadn’t grasped exactly what I had just read. I had to digest it a bit. To tell the truth, even now I am a bit haunted by it. It will do that if you let it. (The message boards at the official website and forum are constantly abuzz with chatter about the mysteries and deepening meanings readers find in their own lives.)
The thing about a book like this is that it requires much from the reader: 1) you must first of all buy into the mystery and the hype just a little bit 2) you must be patient. The shifting voices and tangential nature of the footnotes and appendices require a felicity most modern readers won’t accommodate. You have to let go of control and let the book take over. And finally 3) you HAVE to let the book take over. If you don’t surrender to it, you will not enjoy it. You probably won’t even finish it. Those needing a clear path and a well-lit view will steer clear. And it’s good they do. This isn’t for them.
It’s for me. And people like me, that like to believe that books matter, and that words hold power, and that maybe, just maybe the impossible is not only possible, but it is actually quite probable, no matter how insane that might sound.
This is by far one of the most unusual and challenging books I have ever read. It consists of interlocked multiple stories told by multiple narrators (none of which are terribly reliable). The main text is written largely as a scholarly text complete with footnotes, appendices, and an index. The fonts change style and color to indicate stylistic or tonal changes, and the typeface layout changes frequently making turning the book sideways or upside down necessary, and a couple of times text burrows through the pages in “wormholes” forcing one to skip around the book in order to follow the continuity. It is often labeled and shelved in the horror section of the bookstore, but this odd gem defies such simple delineation. It is an unconventional novel about a mystery, a soul-quivering exploration of the impossible, and finally a love story. This one will be with me forever.

Postscript: (To further complicate matters Danielewski’s sister, recording artist Poe, released a companion piece to this book, a full-length album called Haunted. The two siblings collaborated on these pieces over two years and the works ended up cross-pollinating, creating what Poe refers to as “parallax views of the same story”. Many of the songs on the album refer to characters and events in House of Leaves and Danielewski references Poe and her songs several times in the text as well, although they are often veiled references.)

The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb

Internationally renowned artist and illustrator Robert Crumb does here what many people thought unthinkable: He made the book of Genesis readable! (See what I did there?) No seriously, if you ever started to read the bible and got caught by all those damn (oops!) begats, (i.e. so and so begat so and so and so and so begat who-ha, and who-ha lived fifty thousand years, etc.) this is the book for you. Okay, it still sucks to go through those lists (and there are a LOT of them), but here you can at least place a face with the name!
The fact that Crumb manages to faithfully reproduce the first book of the bible in beautifully illustrated detail is remarkable. A feat even those of us aware of his immense talents thought impossible.
Yes, this is a graphic novel of the first book of the bible. But every word is true, and lovingly transcribed. The Christian Right may disapprove because (Heavens!) Eve’s breasts are naked (as they would have been), but this is a damn fine literal translation of the first book of the Old Testament, made abundantly accessible to every single denominator, not just the most common. Words are no longer necessary. Crumb’s beautiful but crude drawings tell the whole story. It’s almost as if he included the words because he knew someone would pitch a fit if he didn’t.
This is the story of creation as all God’s children can appreciate it. Jews, Muslims, and Christians are all given equal voice in Crumb’s race sensitive drawings. The elements in which all three faiths believe are given most credence, and the characters are drawn (shockingly!) like they are of middle-eastern descent. Who knew Joseph was Jewish??? Also of note is the fine detail put into each “tribes” slight physical differences over time as a result of area-exclusive breeding. The resulting end of the book revolving around Jacob throws considerable insight into the birth of modern culture and religion (at least as far as the middle east is concerned.)
The truth is, Crumb’s detailed illustrations provide a marvel of cross-cultural understanding. The sad reality is that the majority of the Christian population will probably view this book as blasphemy. Here is hope that mankind might better come to understand and love one another by viewing Crumb’s brilliant illustrations, and love one another as the distant cousins that the bible asserts that we are.

The Body Artist by Don DeLillo

The Body Artist is a short novel by the acclaimed author of White Noise, Underworld, and Falling Man. I had heard of DeLillo ever since I was in circles academic enough to know the name DeLillo. The novels (listed above) placed him amongst the top literati of his (our?) generation. I haven’t read those books though. I decided to start with this one. Because it was damned cheap. I picked this one up in one of Borders’ Bargain Blowout Sales and probably got it for about what it cost to print it.
The Body Artist is the story of a young woman, a body artist, grieving the loss of her husband, a renowned European filmmaker, whose sudden death leaves the artist searching for meaning and truth in the midst of her solitude. The work she creates in response and in reaction to this loss is mind-boggling in its implications.
This is as spare as writing gets. This short novel (only 100 pages or so) packs the emotional wallop of a deeply engrossing domestic drama easily three times its length. If poetry were prose, this would be it. Subtle, nuanced, emotionally charged, terse, full of imagery, and hard to decipher: this is a master of the form making something really, really hard look easy. It is a question mark of a book that lives in the soul rather than the mind. One reads it and absorbs it like one does the lines of Whitman.
This is not, I’m sure, the author’s most accessible work, but I find it transcendent. Like poetry or the finest short stories, it works beyond the crass hard edges of reality to create an emotional rather than an intellectual response.

Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff

Another find in the wondrous Borders’ Bargain Blowout sale, this one had my name all over it. For those of you who may know (you all do now…you’re welcome.) I have a small obsession with monkeys. In point of fact, I collect them. I have a lot of monkeys and none are similar. They are very varied and unique. And I just couldn’t resist a mystery-thriller with a title like Bad Monkeys. I mean, c’mon.
The title refers both to a group of universally reviled human beings: (the super evil: aka the rapist, murderer, child molester) and the super-secret organization pledged to take them down…aka Bad Monkeys. They are part of an over-arching crime fighting syndicate ran by Cost-Benefits and overlooked by Malfeasance. The point of Bad Monkeys is to dispatch the nastiest bits of civilization with an easily diagnosed heart attack or stroke, therefore never raising any questions. However, our narrator is a victim of a very Bad Monkey indeed. Her brother was abducted at the age of ten and she has since been trying to find him. However, he as it turns out, is now a lead operative in the Troop (the band of evil-doers set to destroy the world.) As a recruit with Bad Monkeys, she is set to take the Troop down, but of course, complications get in the way.
Normal expectations for thrillers are turned upside down in this fun and taut thriller/sci-fi field trip. Ruff has a hell of a time at the reader’s expense, and the result is a fun and engaging fantasy about what happens when your fortune cookie comes true. You feel the twist coming at the end of the book, but you never quite guess what surprises await you. I loved this silly and fun read and had it completed in a couple of days. I think you’ll like it, too.

Awesome reading this month! For next month I've already started DeLillo's latest novel Point Omega. It is going to be a good month!

Until next time, take care!

The 10 Best Books I Read in 2009

2010-01-02T21:00:00.001-08:00

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.

Literary Lollapalooza, December Edition

2010-01-01T20:53:00.000-08:00

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

Literary Lollapalooza, November Edition

2009-12-12T10:27:00.000-08:00

This month marks my 34th year and I celebrate by reading whatever the hell I want to. You’ll also notice some slight changes in the ‘palooza this month, namely new categories for E-Books, Currently Reading, and I’ve changed up the Books Read reviews to start with a list of the titles for ease to browse titles and decide what reviews you’d like to read. You’re comments and suggestions are always welcome, so please feel free to comment on books or to suggest titles for me to read. Happy reading!

This is Literary Lollapalooza, November Edition.

Books Acquired:

Fiction: Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon, An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England by Brock Clarke, Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris, Gutshot Straight by Lou Berney, Blacklands by Belinda Bauer, and Osama Van Halen by Michael Muhammad Knight

Non-Fiction:

E-Books: The Great Perhaps by Joe Meno, The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens, and McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales edited by Michael Chabon

Books Borrowed:

Currently Reading: The Law of Nines by Terry Goodkind, McSweeney’s Mammoth Book of Thrilling Tales edited by Michael Chabon

Books Read This Month: Hairstyles of the Damned by Joe Meno, Big Sur by Jack Kerouac (included is a music review of One Fast Move or I’m Gone by Jay Farrar and Ben Gibbard), The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson, If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler…by Italo Calvino

Reviews of This Month’s Books:

Hairstyles of the Damned by Joe Meno

I started this book by Joe Meno two days before Halloween, thinking “really, what’s more frightening than high school?”
Hairstyles is the story of Brian, a Catholic high school malcontent, and his best friend Gretchen, a pink-haired punk rock girl. Told first person by Brian, it covers his junior year and all the confusion, desire, fear, and longing that that year contains.
This is as pitch-perfect an account of what it’s like to be a teenager as I have ever read. Centered on the need to belong and the inability to belong, this book is at times hilarious, tragic, and frighteningly close to home. Meno writes with unflinching honesty about how screwed up finding one’s own identity can be. Like Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye, Brian is a whining, unhappy American teen rebelling against everything he can, but unlike Caulfield Brian comes off as likable and charming. I couldn’t help but identify with his daily high school heartbreaks (because that’s how many there are in high school).
If you like the novels of Nick Hornby you’ll like this book. If you are a fan of The Perks of Being a Wallflower you’ll like this book. If you like great young adult fiction with heart and warmth you’ll like this book. ‘Nuff said.

Big Sur by Jack Kerouac
One Fast Move or I’m Gone by Jay Farrar and Benjamin Gibbard

I started reading Big Sur again because I picked up One Fast Move or I’m Gone a cd soundtrack to a documentary film of the same name detailing the time that Kerouac and the other great Beats of San Francisco spent time at cabin in Big Sur.
The soundtrack by Ben Gibbard (of Death Cab and Postal Service) and Jay Farrar (of alt-country stalwarts Son Volt) is a musical masterpiece. Gibbard and Farrar teamed up to write and record the songs for the project using Keroauc’s own words. The result sounds like what we can imagine Kerouac is feeling. It is an astounding mix of two very different sensibilities, coming together to create an altogether unique musical collaboration. Gibbard, in his optimistic tenor, sounds wide open and free on the opening track “California Zephyr”, a feel-good song about the endless fun and possibility of travel. One can imagine a smiling Kerouac, watching the countryside fly by, mile after mile. Farrar, sounds like the weary, soul-worn Keroauc of late night drunken bouts and early morning hangover desolation. On “San Franscisco” he sings about waking up “all goopy and wobegone in the Mars Hotel” and we can see Keroauc feeling the weight of his addiction. Each track manages to evoke a different and altogether fitting aspect of “The King of the Beats”, whether it is wild kicks, or the anguish of self-deception, it’s all here, and it sounds lovely.
So I had to read Big Sur again. I first read this while in college, and my memories were vague at best. Upon rereading it I discovered a couple of things. First, it’s not nearly as well written as most of his earlier novels are. Keroauc was deep in the throes of his alcoholism when he wrote this account of his experiencing first delirium tremens, and eventually a mental breakdown at a small cabin on the California coast. It is essential reading for anyone wanting a complete picture of Kerouac, the man. It details his faults at every turn, an aged old hipster, drunk and taking advantage of everyone around him. He offends and mocks his friends, always in search of the next good time. But the heart of the book is his realization of his inability to quit drinking and settle down. He first goes to Ferlinghetti’s cabin in order to dry out and be alone after the endless promotional touring he’d been doing. He writes, “too much fame keeps a body busy”. He ends up experiencing delirium tremens and hallucinating on the sounds of the ocean. But he breaks down from loneliness and his own paranoid delusions and heads back to San Francisco where the party is never-ending when old Jack’s around. When he eventually has a complete breakdown at the end of the book, he has destroyed his friendship with Neal Cassidy, and destroyed a sad young woman named Willamine, with a young son in tow. In this haunting story, gone is the simple “goofing” that characterized On the Road and The Dharma Bums. This is a man, warts and all, looking at himself in the mirror and writing down what he sees.

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

This is the third and final book in Larsson’s Millenium trilogy. It has not been released in the States yet. I loved the first two books so much that I couldn’t wait for a US release, and ordered my copy from Amazon.uk. It was well worth it.
If you haven’t read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo yet you should. Today. Okay, maybe not, but tomorrow at the latest. Larrson has managed to create one of the best female characters ever written, the complex and dazzling computer hacker Lisbeth Salander. In this third and final part of her story, she finds herself at the center of a government conspiracy and cover up. What I find incredible is how Larsson has written three separate stand alone stories that are still so indelibly linked to the one that came before it, like a puzzle of sorts. I don’t need to say much about this. If you have read Dragon Tattoo, you’ll read Played with Fire, and this one as well. And you’ll be happier for it. This is dazzling writing from an author too soon gone.

If on a winter’s night a traveler…by Italo Calvino

This book came as a recommendation from my friend Annika.
If on a winter’s night a traveler…is not really a novel. It is ten different novels interrupted by a wrap-around story. In this ingenious little book, a reader (who knows, it could be you) picks up If on a winter’s night a traveler…starts reading it and gets about twenty pages in, and right when it’s starting to get good, it just stops. It must be a printing error. The reader goes in search of the missing rest of the book, and finds instead a mystery of literary conspiracies and mass produced cookie cutter novels and anarchist publishers.
This book is a mind-trip of the best kind. From the start it crackles with its own self-awareness, and Calvino continues twisting your expectations at every turn. It is a labyrinthine ode about the love of literature. But it’s never grandiose or condescending. With a wink of his eye Calvino let’s you know that we’re all just having fun here.

And that does it for November. I had a great birthday month, with a great new eReader from Sony (Thanks Carmen!), and a lot of great reads. Next month we’ll close out the year with more reviews and a special Best of 2009 edition. Stay tuned and keep reading!
Meno

Literary Lollapalooza, October Edition

2009-11-01T15:29:00.000-08:00

This month we check out the latest books from two of my favorite authors, and discuss a whole host of spooky and terrifying tales for your Halloween reading fun.

This is Literary Lollapalooza, October Edition.

Books Acquired:

Fiction: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson, If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler…by Italo Calvino, Almost Transparent Blue by Ryu Murakami, and Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

Non-Fiction: Hope for Animals and Their World by Jane Goodall with Thane Maynard & Gail Hudson, and Orangutan by Colin Broderick

Books Borrowed: Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby, and The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Books Read:

Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby

I have been a fan of Hornby’s work since Ryan Barbe gave me a copy of High Fidelity back in college. I had recently suffered through a rough break-up, and Ryan (knowing a few things about tough break-ups and good books), knew just what the doctor ordered. High Fidelity remains one of my favorite books today. About a Boy only confirmed what I already suspected. Here was a writer that not only understood a great deal about how adult relationships really work in all their thorniness, but how music and pop culture explained us to ourselves and to the world around us.
His works have not always lived up to the promise of those early books, but in this his latest, Hornby returns to familiar ground: adult relationships and how music helps define who we are. Annie and Duncan aren’t in love. That’s the first thing. Annie isn’t sure when she first realized it, or if in fact, there had ever been a time that the thought had crossed her mind. Duncan, an aging music fanatic who spends his time and energy retracing the steps of an American singer-songwriter named Tucker Crowe, who mysteriously quit the business and disappeared twenty years earlier, is too busy being self-involved to notice, or truthfully to even care. Theirs is a partnership of convenience, and really, where else would they go? When a seemingly new, stripped down recording of Crowe’s most seminal record arrives in the post, it leads to a cataclysmic change in their staid and regret-filled lives.
This is Hornby back in top form, revisiting his areas of expertise as only he can. The writing is sharp and sardonic, the characters flawed and complex, and as it seems, at least in my life, music serves as the emotional glue that connects us to the world. Juliet, Naked is a top-notch tale of aging, regret, and hope.

Under the Dome by Stephen King

Anyone who knows anything about me knows that Stephen King is important to me. His books are probably single-handedly responsible for making me the book lover that I am today. My clearest memories are of reading Christine at my grandmother’s house at the age of 11 or 12, completely enraptured, hanging on to every line, not able to turn the pages quick enough, my heart pounding in my chest. Since then I have read everything the man has written, including a little non-fiction book called Danse Macabre that isn’t even in publication anymore. Some of his books astonish and take me right back to that childhood memory at grandmother’s house. Others aren’t as well plotted, or paced, or are lacking in an emotional hook. But no matter what, I am what King refers to as a Constant Reader. And when I received an advance reader copy of his latest 1,000+ page epic Under the Dome, I was beside myself. And what better way to spend Halloween than with the Master of Terror?
Anyone familiar with the majority of the works of King knows that small-town Maine is his bread and butter. Here, King is right in wheel-house. Began in 1976, and then abandoned because he felt over-whelmed by the scope, Under the Dome tells the story of little Chester’s Mill, Maine. A small-town in the smallest of sense, (Castle Rock, of many a King story, is the big city to the North if that tells you anything. And readers of Needful Things will understand that.) Chester’s Mill is a place where every single person knows everything there is to know about every other person in town. They all hang out at the same places, they all support the high school football team, and they are all good God-fearing Christian folk. Nice people. The kind of people you find in small towns all over America. The problem with Chester’s Mill is that on the morning of October 21 a giant invisible dome descended on the town completely encapsulating the town at its borders, cutting off access to the outside world and trapping the citizens of the town within. What follows is typical King: The first two pages involve a decapitated woodchuck and an airplane crash, and the violence only worsens with each page. There is no new material here. I was reminded consistently of Needful Things, another small town America tale where good, kind people do horrible things out of fear and greed. But here, King finds a way to tie the story into our cultural zeitgeist. Racism and gossip-mongering fueling national politics instead of hard, deliberate facts; the way the mob-mind has a way of taking over and making ordinary people behave in ways they never ordinarily would (think the guards at Abu Ghraib); how ignorance and blind-faith can be an easy option even when the truth is plain to see.
King is painting in broad strokes here, and every swatch is a slice of modern America, in all its hope, rebellion, resilience and ugliness. The brilliant thing about King in this mode is that the enemy isn’t supernatural, or some outer force, but we at our weakest, most vulnerable states. It may be unpleasant to read, but when King describes how a quiet, inquisitive crowd turns suddenly and viciously into a rioting, looting, mindless mob you can’t help but recognize the scary truth behind the story: these aren’t some loons separate from us that we can frown at disapprovingly from above. This is us when we are fueled by fear, hatred, and ignorance. Do you doubt it? Turn on the TV. and watch the news coverage of the tea-bag parties and how quickly the most vile, ignorant, and hate-filled messages become mantras uniting a people; or how a peace protest can suddenly and without reason become violent and deadly. Again these aren’t new concepts, or even new examples of mankind being its own worst enemy. But they work. And they stick. The images in this book are brutal, gruesome, and terrifying. The book is overlong (as many of King’s books are) but unlike many, I didn’t feel this one drag. That may be because of the heightened sense of time (the entire book takes place in a little over a week’s time), and the extended cast of characters that never become forgettable or one-note.
It’s obvious that King was inspired to revisit this earlier effort because of the recent global and national political landscape, but he never gets preachy and tells one hell of a satisfying story. He has his flaws, including the ridiculous conceit that everyone in this small town in Maine would a.) know and b.) like singer-songwriter James McMurtry and would be able to quote selections from a little known song called “Talkin’ at the Texaco”, an obvious influence for the book. Now, I know who James McMurtry is because I pride myself on knowing esoteric pieces of information like that. I even had some of his music, but I had to find and download this song to have a reference point. To think that a small-town would one and all embrace this song and quote it to themselves in their head is laughable at best. But look at me, nit-picking about a foolish author conceit. The fact is, either you read King or you don’t. You know who you are. If you are a fair-weather friend, I think it’s time to reconnect. If you haven’t read King, this isn’t the place to start. Let me suggest perhaps, Christine. If you wouldn’t normally pick up a copy of King and read it, let’s not fool ourselves or anyone else, you’re not going to read this either. And that’s okay. There are us Constant Readers out there, and we are reading. Constantly.
Under the Dome is available for purchase at your local bookstore or online beginning November 10. (But personally, how they possibly missed a Halloween release date for this is the biggest mistake of all. This is perfect Halloween reading.)

Almost Transparent Blue by Ryu Murakami

I picked up this little oddity of a book while browsing the shelf of Haruki Murakami titles at the bookstore. It had an interesting blue cover of a Japanese man’s face, bald head, and painted pale white. It looked unusual and best of all, short (following the marathon that is King I needed a sprint).
This book was first published in Tokyo in 1976. Centering on the character of young Ryu, and his myriad of friends both female and male, the action takes place during the height of the sex, drugs, and rock and roll revolution that was the seventies. The meandering nearly plot-less 125 pages that make up this book are filled with surprisingly grotesque, lovingly detailed descriptions of orgies, drug use, hallucinations and other finery of Tokyo life near an American military base in the 1970’s. The author’s fascination with bugs, mucous, semen, torn anuses, and orgies involving all mixture of black American men and Japanese women and men is indeed unique.
Yeah. Having said that, I didn’t love this book; I also didn’t dislike this book. It was as I said earlier an oddity, the Japanese equivalent of William S. Burroughs. I’m glad I read it…but I’m not looking forward to reading it again. But hey, if you like that sort of thing…

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman is one of those writers whose reputation precedes him. I didn’t have to read Gaiman to know he was one of the premier English-speaking modern writers currently working in the idiom of science fiction/fantasy. That I had read Gaiman’s critically heralded Sandman comics before I knew there was a THERE there, is beside the point. I later read American Gods and was equally impressed with his work in the novel form.
The Graveyard Book is the award-winning latest book by Gaiman, author of Coraline, and is intended for younger audiences. What age range that might include is baffling to me, because I read it and was thoroughly engaged the entire time, not once feeling pandered to, or as if I was reading below my level. However, I could imagine falling in love with a book like this at the age of twelve or so and rereading it countless times over and over again the following years into adulthood.
This book is simply delightful. This is the story of a young child named Bod (stands for Nobody), whose family was brutally murdered as a baby, but who by chance or fate crawled into the nearby Highgate Cemetery and finds his salvation in the unlikely hands of the Graveyard’s denizens. This adopted family of ghosts, vampires, witches, and werewolves raise Bod in the graveyard, teaching him all the tricks they have to offer to ensure his survival against a brutal killer still intent on finishing the job he left undone.
This book is beautiful. The illustrations by longtime Gaiman associate Dave McKean are incredible, and the gentle, uplifting, and altogether heartwarming story about young Bod’s ascent to adulthood is fascinating and enduring storytelling. Gaiman proves here why he’s garnered the praise that he has, and establishes himself as a writer of unparalleled imagination and warmth. That creatures so ordinarily reviled and feared could be made warm, loving, and loyal is a testament to the man’s ability and charm. If you are looking for a great Halloween read for you and/or your pre-teen/teen that is not scary, but enlightening and uplifting this one is worth your time. Trust me.
I dare anyone to read this book and not love it. I dare you.
I thought not.

That finishes this month’s spooky celebration of Halloween, and well, my favorite authors…Tune in next month to see what I read when I promise myself, for my birthday (on the 9th if you want to send gifts, cash is okay) to only read books I’m really, really, really excited about!
Until then, keep on reading!

Literary Lollapalooza, September Edition

2009-10-02T12:44:00.001-07:00

This month, we leave the frivolity of summer behind in favor of cold hard facts, as I dive head first into as a pile of nonfiction, only coming up for air to take in the latest bestseller from Dan Brown.

This is Literary Lollapalooza, September Edition.

Books Acquired:

Fiction: The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, Hairstyles of the Damned by Joe Meno, Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, Under the Dome by Stephen King

Non-Fiction: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, Super Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

Books Borrowed: Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby

Books Read:

The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power by Tariq Ali

If you pay attention to American foreign policy, or at least stay somewhat afloat of the daily news then it comes to no surprise that Pakistan has been a key element in our Middle Eastern exploits. It is the sixth most populous country in the world and is the only Islamic state to currently have nuclear weapons. It shares a border with Afghanistan, stretching thousands of miles, which is the likely hiding place of Osama bin Laden and continues to be the site of some of the worst insurgency. It has been ruled by a military dictatorship for 33 of its 50 year existence, almost all of which have been backed by the U.S. government. You see, Pakistan is important to us Americans. We’ve provided over $10 billion dollars in aid since 2001, and we’ve sold them more than $5 billion in U.S. weaponry in 2006 alone. So what does the future of Pakistan look like, and what does it mean for the rest of the world?
Tariq Ali is one of the most well-respected and well-connected Pakistani journalists and in this book he examines the entire fifty year history of Pakistan in order to answer this question. With clear and insightful writing, Ali dissects the brutal and shifting militaristic leadership of the country he loves. He explains in great detail how each insurrection and coup came about and how some were stopped before they could ever come to fruition. He also coldly examines the role that the U.S. government has played in backing certain military regimes, in order to protect American interests in the region. I learned more than I ever thought I could about not only Pakistan but about foreign policy and Middle Eastern diplomacy as well.
But don’t be fooled for a second, this is a very dense book recommended to students of history and foreign policy only. This isn’t a book to take on lightly. At times it reads like a textbook of dates, names, and terms. At others it takes on a lively tone of rebellious patriotism, boldly questioning the status quo and calling for everyone to take a closer look at how Pakistan relates to the rest of the world. This is a great book about a difficult and timely topic.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

This autobiography caught my eye years ago and it has been on my reading list ever since. I have even sold this book to other people based solely on my enthusiasm about someday reading it. Its cover is striking, with a sash of blood red drape hanging across the upper left corner, revealing a cloudy sky at either dawn or dusk. It seems to suggest the revelation of some great hidden truth.
It doesn’t reveal any deep hidden mysteries, but it does reveal a writer of astonishing ability. If you think the title is a bit self-important and pretentious you would be right. Unfortunately Eggers has already beaten you to the punch. In what turns out to be a frequent self-deprecating, self-conscious commentary on his own writing, Eggers reveals an obsessive need to judge and validate his every thought or action. What follows is a sort of meta-autobiography as he mixes real events and conversations with imagined self-excoriating conversations with characters that start out being one person but eventually morph into some version of himself. Confused yet? Trust me it’s not actually all that confusing.
Eggers’ great skill here is to do two things at once: a) tell the story of his life following the death of his parents and then having to raise his twelve year old brother, and b) constantly comment on or judge how truthfully or artfully he is accomplishing a). What this built in self-conscious commentary reveals is the inherent “icky”ness of writing a book about oneself. How does one, with all humility and honesty, treat one’s life story as noble or tragic enough to deserve being memorialized at all, much less when you are the one writing the memorial? It leads to questions of integrity and self-aggrandizing phoniness. Eggers is painfully aware of all of this, and so in disarming bits of literary playfulness he both embraces the fact that he is indeed the center of the story, but that he also gets how stupid and self-centered that makes him seem.
Despite all of the literary hoops, Eggers is first and foremost a story teller, and the tale that he lays down here is in fact a heartbreaking one. But don’t worry; you won’t want to open a vein or anything like that. Luckily Eggers also has a great sense of humor and manages to keep things light while treading very dark territory. The first few paragraphs are pretty much a straight-forward memoir recounting his mother’s deterioration from cancer, he and his siblings’ care for her after the sudden death of their father, and the horrors of having to watch as a loved one dies slowly and painfully from an unseen killer. Having lost my mother to cancer in my early twenties, I found it very difficult to get through these pages. I spent much of my time on the bus, or in the break room at work, fighting back tears, swallowing hard to get rid of the lump that rose in my throat.
The book of course has its faults, such as an almost meandering second half, but no amount of pointless twenty-something blathering can take away the book’s multiple charms. An oddity of a book that revels in its own inadequacies, this may not be evidence of a staggering genius, but it is definitely the work of a master craftsman.

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

I couldn’t resist the temptation to take a roller-coaster sidetrack in the midst of my non-fiction month. I had never read any of Mr. Brown’s previous novels, though like millions of others I did see the Ron Howard and Tom Hanks film of “The DaVinci Code”. This novel being set in Washington, D.C., was something that I could not resist. I am just nerdy enough to visit the various locations in the book, a sort of literary treasure hunt or scavenger hunt for book nerds.
You know what you’re getting into when you read a novel like this one. While based on history, the facts end where the book begins. You have to be willing to suspend your disbelief, turn off your bullshit detector, and just go with it, even if you already see that it’s just going to drop you off in the same place you got on.
It’s a fun read with all of the events taking place within a twenty-four period. Sort of like “24” for the nerdy history buff, conspiracy theory set. Is it logical, or believable, or even remotely plausible? Of course not. But you know that already.
This isn’t about facts, it’s about fun. And there is plenty of fun here, even with an over-the-top full-body-tattooed black magic 33rd degree Mason as the villain (I know!). This is a trifle. Take it on vacation. I’ll let you know when I finally do the historic sites scavenger hunt.

The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell

Sarah Vowell is a history buff. Strike that. Sarah Vowell is absolutely batshit gaga about U.S. History. Seriously. She visits places like Salem and Gettysburg on her vacations because she loves history so much. She’s also very, very funny.
That Sarah Vowell is a history nerd should come to no surprise to anyone who has seen her in any of her many appearances on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart or Late Nite with Conan O’Brien. That’s how I was first introduced to Sarah Vowell. Watching her talk about presidential assassinations with her trademark sardonic humor, I was instantly a fan.
This is a collection of her essays, ranging from topics in U.S. history to modern pop culture, and it is really, really funny. Did I say that already? Its okay, it bears repeating. If you like David Sedaris or Ira Glass, this is right up your alley. Enlightening and educational, she never ceases to make me think and laugh about the world we inhabit.

TT4N. Next month I get the privilege of reading brand new books by two of my favorite authors, Nick Hornby and Stephen King. Until then, happy reading!

Literary Lollapalooza, August Edition

2009-09-02T13:59:00.000-07:00

This month, in true summer movie fashion, we end the summer season with a handful of sequels…and a heart-wrenching true story.

This is Literary Lollapalooza, August Edition.

Books Acquired:

Fiction: The Law of Nines by Terry Goodkind

Non-Fiction: The Informant by Kurt Eichenwald

Books Borrowed: The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson, Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

Books Read:

The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

This sequel to the stunning debut The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo picks up right where the first one left off. Almost all of the characters from the first book make a return appearance here. I can’t say too much without giving important plot points away, but just know that the enigmatic Lisbeth Salander plays the central role here with Blomkvist in the supporting role. Salander was such an incredible creation that it is nice to spend much of our time getting into her head and into her past.
While the sequel doesn’t have the driving urgency and gut-busting impact of the first one, this is still a solid story with well-rounded characters. The plot finds itself relying sometimes clumsily on coincidences and convenient plot devices to get to where it is going, but it is still a fun ride.
Any readers who liked the first book will definitely enjoy this one as well. I’m looking forward to the completion of this trilogy when The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest comes out next year.

Evil at Heart by Chelsea Cain

Any constant reader of these pages will recognize Ms. Cain’s name. Stephen King named both of her first two books in this series on his Best Books of 2008 column in EW magazine, and I quickly fell in love with her writing as well reading both books in the last year.
In this the third entry in the serial killer saga, Gretchen Lowell, notorious serial killer, is on the loose. Archie Sheridan, the detective who first caught the Beauty Killer and became her victim and obsession, is now spending his days hospitalized in a mental facility. He’s suffered much too much and needs an extended rest. But bodies are starting to turn up with the Beauty Killer’s signature on them. Has Gretchen started killing again or is there a copycat out there committing crimes in her name. In a society that sells “Run, Gretchen, Run” T-shirts and key-chains that count down the days since she escaped, where does the line fall between celebrity and serial killer?
Evil at Heart is a taut and blazing thriller, easily the best in the series. Ms. Cain’s prose is at its best here, whether describing her hometown of Portland or a crime scene covered in human gore. She is obviously honing her craft with each book, and enjoying herself more along the way. Each page is well-crafted and terrifying suspense, with dark bits of humor and wit peppering the thrills. If you haven’t started reading this series yet…what are you waiting for? I’ve already told you twice! Uncle Stevie told you, too. Heartsick and Sweetheart are both out now in paperback, and Evil at Heart drops into stores on September 1.

You Suck: A Love Story by Christopher Moore

This is the sequel to Mr. Moore’s Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story. The love story between Jody, recent vampire, and Thomas Flood, her minion continues here. The problem is that Jody has just turned Tommy into a vampire, too. Sometimes love sucks. So as the two fledgling vampires try to figure out how to survive in a human world without becoming vicious killers, they must also find a new minion to do their bidding during the daytime. Meanwhile a blue prostitute (named Blue, of course) has hooked up with the Animals, the overnight Safeway stocking crew Tommy used to work with, and has plans of her own. Lucky for her, the Animals have experience hunting vampires.
To tell you the truth I wasn’t really looking forward to this book. I didn’t absolutely love the first book, and I wasn’t really looking forward to reconnecting with the characters. But the book was on my shelf, and I had committed to this idea of sequels, so I read it anyway. I’m glad I did.
The humor comes fast and furious in this book, and while Moore continues to be completely immature and inane, he finds some fun and interesting ways to be completely moronic. This is a very fun story and the characters are all very ridiculous and entertaining. It’s a fast read, and one that requires no thought at all. You Suck is a blast, one hell of a good time. The funniest writing in the book belongs to the journal entries of a fifteen year old wannabe Goth girl named Abby Normal. How Moore so perfectly captures the thoughts and tone of a teen girl I’ll never know. It seems his immaturity finally finds its calling. This is one of the rare cases where a book’s sequel far outshines its predecessor.

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

Abdulrahman Zeitoun was a 49 year old father of four, and proud owner of a painting and contracting company in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit the Louisiana coast. His wife Kathy gathered the kids and fled the city, fearing the worst. Zeitoun, a humble and stubborn man, decided to stay and keep an eye on things, after all he’d stayed through all the other storms and been fine. Besides he had clients and equipment all over town, and a few rental properties that he owned, someone had to be there to take care of something in case of an emergency. When the levees broke, leaving New Orleans completely under water, Zeitoun was there to drag the family’s belongings to the second floor, saving much. In his aluminum canoe he was able to paddle around the neighborhood, helping people who had stayed like him to safety. He was able to locate houses where abandoned dogs whined from hunger and feed them. He felt like God had put him there for a reason. But as conditions spiraled out of control in the region between looters and the American military presence, New Orleans was the last place on Earth he should have been.
This true story of the Zeitoun family is a top-notch read. Above and beyond simple reporting, Eggers revels in the details, the smallest points of interest that add up to a human life. The story told here is of a Syrian immigrant, strong-willed and well-liked, a small-business owner and loving husband and father who when called upon to act did the extraordinary; and the uplifting, terrifying, and shattering journey that followed in the wake of disaster.
I CANNOT give this book a higher recommendation. You will love this book, I guarantee it. A better biography has not been written this year. Astoundingly well-written, this one is a must read!

That’s all for now folks. Hope you find some time to do some reading.

Literary Lollapalooza, July Edition

2009-09-02T13:45:00.000-07:00

This month I attempt to slum it, then get delightfully literary, and then finish things off with an uber-violent summer popcorn action flick…but wait, it’s a book! With reading this fun, it must be summer.

This is Literary Lollapalooza, July Edition.

Books Acquired:

Fiction: The Damnation Game by Clive Barker, The Book of the Dead by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, The Devil of Nanking by Mo Hayder, Spooner by Pete Dexter, Evil at Heart by Chelsea Cain, The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry, A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe, Music for the Off-Key by Courttia Newland

Non-Fiction: A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink, My First Movie: Take Two edited by Stephen Lowenstein, At the Center of the Storm by George Tenet

Books Borrowed: Why We Suck by Dr. Denis Leary, The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares

Books Read:

Burning Chrome by William Gibson

If you have seen any of the hundreds of science fiction films made in the last twenty-some-odd years then you are familiar with William Gibson. Not that he wrote any of those movies, or even the novels upon which those movies are based. No, William Gibson’s influence goes much deeper into the overall thematic breadth and scope of modern science fiction. Like Asimov and Bradbury did for earlier generations, Gibson provides the visionary framework with which we as post Gen-Xers understand the realm of probable and possible science; by reaching into the cultural zeitgeist of the burgeoning 1980’s computer culture, in a sense he fashioned us into who we are today. The man after all coined the term Cyberspace.
Long before there was an internet, or even accessible wireless communication Gibson was dreaming it and writing it down. When he burst onto the sci-fi scene with his now classic Neuromancer he managed to tap into our mass unconscious, creating a world not too far removed from the one we now find ourselves inhabiting.
Burning Chrome is a collection of short stories written and co-written by William Gibson and reading it is like reliving every modern classic of science fiction all over again. From Bladerunner to The Matrix, and seemingly every step of the way Gibson was there first, laying the groundwork. Most of the stories are brief and highly visual glimpses into a world so jacked into its technology, that it’s lost its soul. Among the stories is “Johnny Mnemonic” the original source material for the egregiously bad Keanu Reeves movie of the same title. Trust me, this is better. My favorite of the collection is The Belonging Kind co-written with John Shirley. It’s about a lonely guy named Coretti who while drinking in various late-night dives notices an odd breed of bar denizen and becomes obsessed. The beauty of this as with all his short stories is that he paints a lasting image without filling in all the holes. He is a master of ambiguity, and often the reader is left uncertain of what to believe. Reality in these works is as elusive and slippery as it often is in life, depending on interpretation and perspective for definition.
The future that Gibson paints is not a bright one, and these stories are often cold, gritty, and mournful, but the eloquence of his voice and the power of his images make him a must-read for anyone. Plus sometimes the cold empty void of space is just what is needed in the heat of the summer doldrums.

Candy Girl by Diablo Cody

Candy Girl is the autobiographical story of how author Cody became an unlikely Minneapolis stripper. Ms. Cody is best known for winning an Oscar for the screenplay of last year’s indie darling Juno. She has several other screenplays in production including Jennifer’s Body with Megan Fox coming out this Fall, and is a contributing columnist for Entertainment Weekly. Ms. Cody is a funny and often offensive writer. And this book is a whole lot of fun.
In what is ultimately an outsiders’ perspective Cody delves into the bright lights and dingy back rooms of the stripper’s life, laying bare (literally) all the nasty truths and often surprising realities of the sex trade.
Told in her self-deprecating voice Candy Girl is a fast and frothy read. It is comical, sick, endearing, educational, and often gross. But it is light and good-hearted fun. For those of you who always wanted to know what goes on in those little video booths but were afraid to ask, this is for you.

Why We Suck by Dr. Denis Leary

Denis Leary is also a funny sonovabitch. His wit is at its sharpest on his phenomenal FX series Rescue Me. But his stand-up shows are also quite funny, if not a little repetitive and immature. Why We Suck is like Leary’s stand-up act. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing.
A full-blown treatise on all the things that make Denis crazy about fat, whiny, self-important Americans, it is a bit one-note. If you are even a little cynical most of the good Doctor’s rants are far from novel. Americans are fat? Shocking! Americans have a bloated legal system weighed down by frivolous law suits? I protest!
But seriously, Leary is very funny and there are moments of brilliant social satire to be found here. Unfortunately I think much of the material falls flat without Leary’s caustic delivery. I would’ve rather seen this material live on stage, or at the very least listened to it on audio so that Leary’s personal wit and charisma could fill some of those flat moments.

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Tower Wells

Some people just seem to have an innate ability to string words together in such a way that reading them is a pleasure in and of itself.
Tower Wells is one of those people. This, his first collection of short fiction, is a testament of his uncanny ability. A collection of stories that (mostly) highlight the ordinary and everyday moments of an average life, the stories rise above the average on Wells’ well-constructed prose, subtly building its own momentum on pure lyricism.
From a story about a middle-aged man (literally) rebuilding his life after his job and marriage have tanked on the North Carolina coast, to one (Insert Story) Tower Wells announces his arrival on the literary scene like a modern Raymond Carver, creating a sense of purpose and beauty out of the banality of average human life.
The only weak story in the bunch is ironically the one which shares the collection’s title. A tale of Vikings pillaging and plundering seems blatantly out of step with the rest of the collection, and brings me to think that Wells must have been meaning to draw some sort of parallel between these very different stories. Perhaps it is something about how modern man ravages and burns his own village rather than those of his neighbors, etc. I don’t know; I don’t get it.
Despite this misstep Ravaged/Burned is without a doubt one of the very best books I have read this year. This is a collection of short fiction that sings, an absolute glorious way to spend a warm summer afternoon with a glass of wine. I can’t offer higher praise than that.

The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares

My friend Josh brought this book to me unsolicited, and said I should read it. I had never read anything by Casares before, or indeed had ever even heard of him. I was, to say the least, intrigued. It’s not often that a book gets placed into my hands.
A contemporary of Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares was an Argentinean author who, inspired by his Buenos Aires landscape and the influx of poets and intellectuals from Spain, North America and Asia, sought to create a “fantastical literature” that rebelled against what he felt were the artifices of nineteenth century realism.
The Invention of Morel is part adventure story and mystery, part Kafkaesque absurd drama, and a metaphysical and philosophical exploration of reality and our perceptions of reality. The story of an escaped political prisoner, our hero finds himself living on a deserted island and witnessing the most unusual of comings and goings. Thinking himself mad, he seeks to uncover the secret behind the mysterious group of people that seem to come and go at a moment’s notice. To make matters worse, he finds himself falling in love with a beautiful dark-haired girl in the group. But why does she pretend not to see him? Is she torturing him or setting him up for capture? As he digs deeper, the clear distinctions between reality and perception starts to thin, raising the question “how can he be with one he loves when she doesn’t and truly can’t ever know him?”
This is a fast read and an amazingly athletic and dexterous one at that. With what seems like little or no effort Casares manages to weave incredibly deep strands of thought into what comes across as a simple adventure story. It isn’t until you’ve finished the thing and let it really sink in that you marvel at the author’s ability to get under your psychic skin without ever letting you know he was there.

Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell

It should be no surprise that Beat the Reaper coming in paperback September 14 from Back Bay Books has already been optioned for film rights by New Regency Productions.
Josh Bazell’s frenetic break-neck paced debut thriller is pure cinematic fun. It weaves and bobs and slashes and bashes like a Tarantino film about doctors and mafia dons. Think the visual style of Lucky Number Slevin mixed with the comic sensibilities of Pulp Fiction. It ain’t pretty, but is sure is fun.
Dr. Peter Brown is an intern at Manhattan’s worst hospital. He’s keeping himself awake for his shift by chewing down whatever medications he can cop off nurses or patients, and to make matters worse some guy just tried to mug him on his way into work. Dr. Brown has patients he’s struggling to keep alive, and a secret he’s desperately trying to keep hidden: he’s an ex-Mafia hit man with a knack for violence. And as if things weren’t bad enough he was just recognized by his new patient, Nicholas LoBrutto. Now he’s got hit men and government agents closing in and Dr. Peter Brown must find a way to keep himself and his patients alive until end of his shift.
A hard-boiled uber-violent mix of medical mayhem and mafia shenanigans Beat the Reaper is pure blood-soaked fun. It’s a summer popcorn flick without the film. You won’t find anything resembling a message here. There are no deeper meanings, no symbolism, no thematic structures; this is fluff. But hey, if you like your comedy black and your violence bloody and your good guys just a little bit bad, this just might be your cup of tea.

Whew! July was a busy month. I have a feeling things are going to slow down in August. Join me next month here at Literary Lollapalooza and read about what I’ve been reading.

Literary Lollapalooza, June Edition

2009-07-25T16:06:00.000-07:00

In this month’s edition of Literary Lollapalooza, a tale of Islamo-punks searching for truth, a side trip into the fineries of the Muslim faith, a dazzling Swedish mystery debut, and the truth that literary sycophants don’t want you to know about David Foster Wallace.

This is Literary Lollapalooza, June Edition.

Books Acquired:

Fiction: The Life of Pi by Yann Martel, Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson, Huge by James W. Fuerst, Level 26: Dark Origins by Anthony Zuiker

Non-Fiction: The Good Life by Helen and Scott Nearing

Books Borrowed: The Taqwacores by Michael Muhammad Knight, Dummies Guide to Islam by

Books Read:

Dummies Guide to Islam by

I started the month by attempting to read The Taqwacores (see below) which I borrowed from my good friend Fahad. He gave it the highest recommendation along with all the other books by Michael Muhammad Knight. I was very excited and dove in with aplomb. To my chagrin, I did not get very far. This book centering on devout, yet non-traditional Muslims is so steeped in the everyday life of the Muslim faith that I could not ignore the obvious hole in my worldly knowledge. I would read Taqwacores, but first I would educate myself, damn it.

This Dummies’ Guide like most is a general knowledge compendium without much style, flair, or depth. I knew that going into it. I was not surprised, pleasantly or otherwise upon completion. It was as dry as toast, and as lifeless and dull as a textbook. It was however, very clearly organized and exactly what I needed: a brief and thorough education for the utterly uninitiated. I find now that I know much, much more about Islam than I did before. The test of which came day before yesterday when a Jeopardy category titled “Islam” stumped the on-air players while I confidently answered all correctly.

Take that as you will.

The Taqwacores by Michael Muhammad Knight

This book, first self-published in 2004, has in recent years become a word of mouth sensation inspiring film adaptations, and foreign-language translations. Newsweek called it “A manifesto for the Muslim punk movement” and is regarded by many as a “’Catcher in the Rye’ for young Muslims.”

As my friend Fahad described it to me, having been raised Muslim and a fan of punk music since his teens he always had a hard time reconciling the two in his life. This book, he said, was like everything he ever wanted to say, and he was pissed off because Knight got to it first.

To say that this is a book about young Islamic punks is like saying Catcher in the Rye is about a rich whiny white kid with an attitude problem. Wait. Catcher IS about a rich whiny white kid with an attitude problem. Sorry, bad example.

Okay, try this: Saying Taqwacores is about Islamic punks, is like saying On the Road is about young urban hipsters. It may be true at its core, but it misses the point entirely.

Taqwacore is name for the Islamo-punk subculture, and comes from the term taqwa meaning consciousness of the divine in Arabic. The characters in this book are unique and starkly drawn individuals, and the house they share in a college town in Upper New York state houses their own religious community, pious and irreverent, swinging from salaats in the morning to wild parties at night.

Reading this was like taking a trip back in time for me. All of the characters felt like people I knew back in high school and college. The camaraderie of the housemates, their philosophical, late-night musings, bong smoke hung thick in the air. I feel closely connected to these characters and their story in a very personal way that transcends any cultural or religious differences that we may share.

I can’t say enough good things about this book. I loved the people, the places, the good times, and the heartbreaking times. And I will always think of them fondly, much like my own days of bliss and doubt, when the world was as simple or as complicated as you wanted to make it.

Consider the Lobster, and other essays by David Foster Wallace

Last year when David Foster Wallace was found dead at his own hands the literary world mourned a fallen and unsung genius. Literary critics got together and wailed at the loss of such a bright young literary star.

It makes sense then that Wallace has been on my short-list of must reads since his death was announced last year. My first foray into Wallace’s work was the collection of essays Consider the Lobster, consisting mostly of previously published freelance writing appearing in a number of periodicals over the years.

I wanted to like it. That’s all I can say. I was rooting for him. Perhaps this isn’t his finest work (and I’m still withholding final judgments until I read Infinite Jest), but it seems to me that no one thought Mr. Wallace more a literary hero than he did himself. These essays, while some are cute or verging on interesting, are just downright tiring and aggravating. While reading this collection one can’t help but hear the self-righteous snark underlining each sentence. And the endless footnotes are mind-bogglingly self-important and overly inflated. I mean come on; do we really need a two page footnote in the middle of an essay on the Adult Video News Awards? And footnotes to footnotes? Come on! By the time I got to “Snoot” the self-righteous essay self-righteously explaining his snobbery when it comes to grammatical faux pas, I was done. I could take no more. Mr. Wallace may think that elucidating the myriad horrors of a dangling participle, or heaven forbid a dangling preposition, with footnote upon footnote of the failures of modern English classes to be enriching and entertaining. I do not.

And don’t get me wrong, I like snark as much as the next guy. And even smug plays well with me sometimes, as my collection of Hunter Thompson will attest. But when the self-importance of the writer is all I can get from a book that is supposed to be on a myriad of different topics, that is a failure of the writing.

David Foster Wallace well may be fallen literary hero. The critics may clamor for him as if he were some unsung genius of literary wit. But I am not amused.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson

Stieg Larsson died before the publication of this, his first novel, and it is truly a shame because The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has made him a phenomenon.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a top-notch mystery thriller with enough twists and turns to keep you glued to the page. Part “locked room” mystery, part corporate finance, and part nail-biting suspense this is the epitome of a great summer read.

Over forty years ago Harriet Vanger, youngest of one of Sweden’s wealthiest families, disappeared without a trace. Now, her elderly uncle has hired Mikael Blomkvist, a troubled but brilliant journalist, to investigate and discover what really happened all those years ago. Helping him out is the anti-social computer hacker, Lisbeth Salander: a tattooed badass with a badass attitude. Together they uncover the darkest family secrets of depravity and corruption.

This book is a sucker-punch of a good read. It will leave you breathless and wanting more. Both boldly paced and meticulously plotted, Girl clips along at a breakneck speed, with plenty of chills, thrills, and unnerving violence.

There are even moments of great humor. When a rape victim turns the table on her attacker and mitigates her own form of justice and revenge, you can’t help but giggle at the gruesome turn of events.

Brilliant. ‘Nuff said.

Literary Lollapalooza May 2009

2009-06-06T09:21:00.001-07:00

In this month’s edition of Literary Lollapalooza, a timeless classic, and a new release by one of Mystery-Thriller’s brightest young voices.

This is Literary Lollapalooza, May Edition.

Books Acquired:

Fiction: Dark Places by Gillian Flynn, and Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea

Non-Fiction:

Books Borrowed: The Taqwacores by Michael Muhammad Knight

Books Read:

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Dostoevsky is one of those writers I always felt like I should read. Out of obligation to…I don’t know, all self-respecting literature hounds. However, between feeling like I should read Dostoevsky out of some misguided need to feel better about myself and the easier option of taking a look at the sheer HEFT of Crime and Punishment and putting it off indefinitely, the procrastinator in me always won out. This last month though I struck a compromise with myself: I would read Dostoevsky, but I would read something much shorter, and something with a fun title. Hey guess what? That smart Russian guy wrote a book called The Idiot. Sounds funny.

Okay, so no. The Idiot isn’t really funny. It is not short-listed for a film-adaptation by the Farrelly Brothers (though I must admit I’d love to see that). What it is, is a fairly light Russian novel about the dangers of independence and of being kind-hearted in a modern society. It is a sweeping tale involving many characters over a period of years, and yes it does wear its moral heart on its sleeve.

It is also a very good read. Not fun or thrilling, but a very involving and accessible story about people not so very different than you or I. And it’s considerably shorter than Crime and Punishment. So you can feel good about yourself without the strain of those heavy Russian novels.

The Idiot refers to the title character of Prince Myshkin, a kind-hearted and guileless rube from the countryside who travels to the city and makes a splash in good Petersburg society. The word idiot here does not really refer to a stupid person, just a simple one. Childlike, trusting, without personal machinations, Prince Myshkin is laughed at openly, the unwitting butt of his own joke. But his honesty, unselfconsciousness, and lack of agenda quickly make him a party favor of sorts, with good families requesting his presence at gatherings as a conversation-piece. He is tossed immediately into the maelstrom of society, money, marriage, wealth, and backstabbing.

The story is a complex one, and it would be a disservice for me to try to summarize it here. The point is that these are relevant characters, finely drawn, unique and immediately recognizable. The situations are, while steeped in Russian upper class history, easily transferrable to our own societal stratifications. Imagine a poor country bumpkin, unaccustomed to societal niceties and oblivious of faux pas, suddenly becoming a mascot to the very wealthy, treating him like an odd bird, and never truly accepting him as a human being until he too has gained some status of wealth.

There is a lot of humor, and a lot of quirky characters, and tons of intrigue and double-dealings and love and heartbreak. It took me nearly six weeks to read the damn thing, but now that I’m through it, I’m very glad I read it. And not in an intellectually superior way either. Nope, I’m just glad I’ve gotten to know these characters and that I invested my time into understanding them, maybe just a little bit. AND I get to say I read Dostoevsky. So suck it.

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn.

And now for something completely different. Gillian Flynn is a bright new up-and-comer in the mystery/thriller world who was short-listed for an Edgar Award for her first novel Sharp Objects. Dark Places is her second novel, and I can’t wait to read more from this young lady.

The first thing one might notice about Ms. Flynn’s books are the simple, sparse and captivating cover art. The cover of Dark Places features a prominent pad lock in the hatch of the kind of lock one puts on basements, or dungeons. The kind of lock one puts on a door to keep people out or maybe more importantly to keep something inside.

Dark Places refers to those parts of one’s psyche we’d rather believe didn’t exist. We lock them away and keep them far from the cold sane light of day, because looking at them, admitting they are there might somehow make us a little less human. Libby Day, the story’s protagonist is the sole survivor of a massacre that took place when she was a young child way back in 1985. It seems Libby’s brother Ben, in the early hours of Jan. 3 1985 slaughtered his entire family as part of an elaborate Satanic ritual, and Libby alone survived to testify against her brother, putting him away for life.

Libby is now in her early thirties, and has eked out an existence on the pity of strangers sending donations to “that poor Day girl”, but now the donations have dried up. It seems no one cares about a thirty-something tragedy survivor. So in an attempt to further capitalize on her past Libby begins selling memories and memorabilia to local so-called Kill Clubs, a group of individuals obsessed with horrific serial killers. But Libby soon starts to uncover bits and pieces of her past that were supposed to stay hidden forever. As Libby traces the clues to her own past, she sets off on a terrifying journey of discovering the hidden truth of her family’s deaths.

I loved Gillian Flynn from the first paragraph of this book:

“I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark, drop on the floor so you can stomp on it.”

Anyone who can write a line like that is okay in my book. Plus, Stephen King calls her writing “an admirably nasty piece of work…” And I am sold.

This reads along at a dizzying pace, flipping forward and backwards from the present to that fateful January day back in 1985, keeping you constantly moving forward searching for the next piece of evidence. But what stayed with me long after the nightmares faded were the scary-but-true insights Ms. Flynn uncovers about the human psyche. Again we’re talking about those dark places. The ones we’ve shoved deep in a closet and pretended never existed. Heck we’ve even bolted that door with a padlock. How disturbing it is then to have Ms. Flynn parade those skeletons right past you, your head nodding in recognition before you have the good sense to shudder and quickly shove them away again.

Literary Lollapalooza April 2009

2009-06-06T09:20:00.001-07:00

This month’s Literary Lollapalooza is a short one featuring a book many of you saw me gush over on Facebook. Besides that one, I started reading The Idiot which would take me through most of May as well, so not a lot to report. I had the fortune (or misfortune, if you ask my bank account) of happening upon some really terrific book sales and so this month is a little heavy on the acquisitions side. Lord knows when I’ll find the time to read them all…

This is Literary Lollapalooza, April Edition.

Books Acquired:

Fiction: The Boy Detective Fails by Joe Meno, The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Body Artist by Don DeLillo, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, Impulse by Ellen Hopkins, God Is Dead by Ron Currie, Jr., Interred With Their Bones by Jennifer Lee Carrell, The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly, Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut, The Night Gardener by George Pelecanos, Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

Non-Fiction: The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs, Outcasts United by Warren St. John, How to Win a Cosmic War by Reza Aslan, The End of Oil by Paul Roberts, The Day the World Ended at Little Big Horn by Joseph M. Marshall III, Popism: The Warhol Sixties by Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett, Candy Girl by Diablo Cody, Champlain’s Dream by David Hackett Fischer, The Secret War with Iran by Ronen Bergman, Books by Larry McMurtry, The American Way of War by Eugene Jarecki, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

Books Borrowed:

Books Read:

The Boy Detective Fails by Joe Meno.

My friend Ryan had been touting this book for quite some time as his favorite book and encouraging all his friends to read it. I ignored him. Or rather, I added it to the dustbin in my mind reserved for odd pieces of information I’ll probably never put to good use. Then back in February he reminded me again (undoubtedly in one of those silly web surveys) that this was a book that I MUST read. I took him up on his suggestion and read the damn thing.

First, of all: I loved this book. It’s not my favorite book, sorry Ryan. But I did love the hell out of it. And I would be willing to bet that anyone who remembers reading the “Encylopedia Brown” books, or The Hardy Boys, or Nancy Drew mysteries, reveling in the finely drawn sets of clues, the simple solution sussed out amongst friends, and the glory as the evil candy factory owner gets hauled away in cuffs will find much to enjoy here.

The titular Boy Detective, Billy Argo, is a childhood crime-solving phenom much like the above mentioned “Encylopedia Brown”, solving simple mysteries with the help of his sister and pudgy friend, vanquishing evil villains and garnering accolades. There’s only one major problem: life goes on, people grow up, and life gets messy. There are no simple solutions, no masked villains causing our collective misery. Just plain, old everyday fear, self-conciousness, and doubt. As the years pass and young Billy heads off to college, his world is destroyed when his younger sister and crime-solving partner Caroline commits suicide, sending him into a spiral of fear and helplessness.

Cut to ten years later and young Billy is being released from St. Vitus’ Hospital for the Mentally Ill. The world he encounters is foreign and frightening. He can barely draw the courage to leave his room, much less go to his new job as a telemarketer at a wig company. What’s even worse? There are people and buildings that are vanishing everyday, evil villains live next door, and animals are losing their heads. What’s a boy detective to do? With the help of two neighborhood children, and a lovely pickpocket named Penny, Billy begins to put the pieces together, and come to the greatest realization of his life.

The story is funny, cute, odd, disheartening, uplifting, and sweet. But what puts this book over the top in my opinion is the sense of childhood wonder and joy that it instills through its interactive features. That’s right: interactive. Readers are encouraged to use the decoder ring (thoughtfully included on the back book jacket) to solve clues throughout the book, helping Billy closer to his resolution, as well as additional fun items like a recipe for Angel Food Cake, and mazes and word-searches. This is a book for the dreamer in all of us, for the latent child detective in each of us, still searching for our own happy endings.

Literary Lollapalooza March 2009

2009-06-06T09:16:00.000-07:00

This issue of Literary Lollapalooza features a serial-killer obsessed cop, the search for Lincoln’s killer, a crime story about fathers and sons, an action packed Harlan Coben thriller and a sweet story about a Russian Jew in WWII era Leningrad in search of a dozen eggs. It was a busy month and I did a lot of reading. Some were home-work, some personal obsessions. If you must skim, just skip to the last review. It’s the bees knees.

This is Literary Lollapalooza, March Edition.

Books Acquired: The Way Home by George Pelecanos, A Little Bit Wicked by Kristin Chenowith, Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk, and The Lost City of Z by David Grann.

Books Borrowed: Long Lost by Harlan Coben and City of Thieves by David Benioff.

Books Read:

Sweetheart by Chelsea Cain.

This is the sequel to the bestselling thriller Heartsick. Chelsea Cain delves right back into old territory with this continuation, following detective Archie Sheridan and his obsession with serial killer Gretchen Lowell.
This book picks up a few months after the events of the first book and barrels forward with momentum. Archie, our most beloved of F**ked-Up detectives is on the mend. He has moved back in with his ex-wife and children (though sleeping in a separate room), he is still heading a homicide task force dealing exclusively with serial crimes, and he is attending therapy and attempting to control his addiction to pain killers. He has however stopped visiting Gretchen.
And with the discovery of two bodies in a neighborhood park, Archie is faced with another serial killer, and reporter Susan ward is nearby to help identify one of the victims. Trouble is, just as this case takes off the Beauty Killer is back in the news: Gretchen Lowell has escaped from prison. Archie needs to focus but can’t keep his mind off Gretchen. He has a fool-proof plan to both reunite with and capture his one true obsession.
This is a brilliant if not slightly forgettable follow up to the incendiary debut that put Chelsea Cain on the literary map. All the old characters are back, and so are all the old crushes, grudges and emotional baggage. The plot progresses naturally from events set up in Heartsick and the characters follow the trajectories already set in motion. Everything rings true, and while we cheer Archie’s surface progress (the family, the drugs), we know it’s just surface and that the demons that haunt him swim much deeper, and that sooner rather than later Archie will inevitably dive to join those demons.
The case is a good one, and the sub-plot involving Susan Ward and a politician’s affair with a teen is thankfully revived from the first book and brought to fruition.
If there is a problem with the book, it is also its most endearing quality, that it is too intricately tied to the first. This isn’t so much a sequel as it is a continuation of the first. The loose ends of the first book are revived here, and the issues unresolved in the first book are back on display here. It’s almost as if these two books should have been one larger volume.
Again, this is part of its inherent charm. And it is also the reason why it comes across as forgettable. One begins to forget where one book ends and the other begins. When paired together (as Stephen King did when he named these two books among his top ten books of last year) they are phenomenal reads. They are highly engrossing and the characters and likeable and flawed, and we root for them and two minutes later we shake our heads in sympathy because we know why they make the bad choices we wish they wouldn’t. This is top-notch crime writing and Chelsea Cain is a name to watch.

Manhunt by James L. Swanson

Manhunt follows the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and traces the 12 day hunt for John Wilkes Booth and his collaborators.
I have been obsessed with all things Lincoln since reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s incredible Team of Rivals. However that book left me unsatisfied in the fact it literally ends with the assassination. Don’t get me wrong, it provides perfunctory information about what befalls our key players in the following years, but I wanted to know minute by minute what happened following the assassination, as I had grown accustomed to in Kearns’ 800 page opus.
Luckily for me, James L. Swanson, a man obsessed with Lincoln’s death has provided a moment by moment account of Lincoln’s death and the days thereafter where all of the country waited with their breaths held to hear of the capture of Lincoln’s murderer. This is the PERFECT follow-up to Kearns’ in-depth Lincoln bio. It picks up right where Kearns leaves off, and his eye and ear for detail, not to mention his encyclopedic research into all things Lincoln and Booth, provide a thrilling moment to moment account of Lincoln’s murder and Booth’s subsequent escape and the nation-encompassing manhunt that followed.
This book reads like the best mystery/thriller, but of course, it’s all true.
Swanson is an expert on the topic of Lincoln’s assassination, having written three separate books on the topic (and he is currently working on another Lincoln bio), so you know the facts are solid, and he crafts them into a well-told campfire story about honor, duty, conviction, and hubris.
I would recommend this book to anyone. But I would especially recommend it to anyone who has read or is planning to read Team of Rivals. Focusing on Lincoln’s death and aftermath, it is a terrific follow up to a great biography of Lincoln’s life.

The Way Home by George Pelecanos (To be released May 12, 2009)

George Pelecanos is the kind of come crime writer that you read because it rings true. The novelist and Emmy-nominated writer for HBO’s hit series The Wire is a D.C. native, and chooses to place his novels in the heart of the city he loves best.
The Way Home is the latest in Pelecanos’ treasure trove of D.C. crime novels. Stephen King calls Pelecanos “possibly the greatest crime writer working today”.
My first Pelecanos was his last called “The Turnaround” and I immediately fell in love with his writing and his landscape. I had just moved to D.C. and his use of geography in telling the story really served me well as a new resident.

Pelecanos isn’t florid or melodic. He isn’t wordy and he doesn’t try to impress with a fancy turn of phrase. However Pelecanos writes the truth. His books are often short, simple, and to the point. The trick is that his characters are so real and his situations so believable and immediate that you can’t help but be transported. He doesn’t deal with major situations, but rather with simple real-life moral questions that any of us could face on any given day. His characters are not one-sided two-dimensional plot devices, but flawed and complex human beings who try to do their best from one moment to the next but often wind up making the wrong choice, only to have deal with the consequences later.
As a matter of fact, Pelecanos’ books are all about the consequences of our actions. The stupid split second decisions that we spend a lifetime reliving, overcoming, and forgiving ourselves for are his bread and butter.
The Way Home is another in this line. This one is particularly focused on the relationship between a father and a son. The way that we let the silence and miscommunication separate and dictate our relationships with one another.
The story is about Chris Flynn, a tough but uninspired teen who lets his bad decisions land him in a teen correctional facility. His relationship with the outside world, including his parents, is tenuous at best. He has no interest and no concern for anything outside of the here and now—The Pines, the facility in which he is incarcerated and the young men who spend their youths there is his only concern. Day to day survival is enough to worry about. But soon Chris starts to imagine a life outside of his violent environs, and with the help of Ali, a studious fellow inmate, begins to put his life back together.
Fast-forward, and Chris is out and working for his father’s carpet company. He’s got a girlfriend, and a best friend, and he’s mending his relationship with his father. The trouble comes, as it often does, unexpectedly and faced with a tough decision Chris sets his future, his family and friends, onto a crash-course with destiny, rolling with the punches until ultimately he must make one last decision. And he and his father must face the toughest challenge of all: trusting one another.
I love Pelecanos, and find that his writing transports me more fully into the lives of his characters than most any other writer I know. This stuff isn’t pretty, but it’s real.

Long Lost by Harlan Coben (released March 31, 2009)

Long Lost is the latest in a series of novels based around the character of Myron Bolitar, a sports agent turned man-who-gets-things-done.
The book centers around Myron’s re-acquaintance with an ex-lover named Therese, and a mystery involving her ex-husbands’ disappearance, a strange genetic clue, and a faction of terrorists using Aryan children as weapons, bent on utter destruction.
This is kind of a silly beach read. This is a fun and rewarding mystery thriller that doesn’t require much in the way of investment. There are shocks to be had, for sure, but this is good old-fashioned fluff, and it is an enjoyable way to pass an afternoon.
Coben makes this book entirely accessible to anyone, whether they have read the previous Myron Bolitar novels or not. I, in this case, had not. And I enjoyed it immensely. This is the literary equivalent to a Hollywood action blockbuster. It required no deep involvement, the slimmest of character development, and presented action, thrills, and chills galore.
My only complaint is that Bolitar, a funny, self-deprecating ex-athlete is never allowed to fully become a person. I assume that this is because it is part of a series. Along with the ease of dealing with characters we already know is that we don’t have to do all that long boring character development that you get in the first one. However, in a book that is intended to stand alone and entice readers to read the other Bolitar novels, it is important to know who our hero really is. Unfortunately, he never really becomes a solid identity, and his friends and colleagues, cartoonish and two-dimensional at best, while fun and amusing, never lend an ounce of realism.
I said there were surprises, and I wasn’t joking. About midway through there is a jaw-dropper that I still haven’t recovered from, and at the time left me breathless like a punch to the gut. There is lots of international intrigue, twists, turns, and crazy surprises that you’ll never see coming, and others that you saw all along. This is great mindless entertainment, the popcorn movie equivalent of a great read. Sometimes it’s just what the body craves, even while you chide yourself for giving in to the temptation.

City of Thieves by David Benioff (released in quality paperback format March 31)

This is quite simply a stunning novel of grace, wit, horror, and human frailty and courage. I was blown away from the first few pages.
David Benioff is a screenwriter best known for his adaptation of The Kite Runner, and the author of the book 25th Hour, which subsequently became a Spike Lee joint starring Edward Norton. 25th Hour was a good crime story, but held no clue as to the depths and heights of Benioff’s talents.
City of Thieves is a fictionalized account of Benioff’s grandfather’s stories of growing up as a young Russian Jew in Leningrad during WWII. The tale that follows is a wry, sprightly, menacing, and ultimately joyful romp though the Russian countryside. It has moments of great sorrow and austerity, but revels in the all-too-human moments of farts and sexual arousal.
This is a great coming-of-age tale that spans many genres while telling its too-strange-to-not-be-true story. The story centers on 17 year old Lev Beniov who by chance happens on a fallen German soldier, and upon taking the soldiers knife enters into an adventure that will take him to the edge of death’s door and to the heights of love’s kiss.
Sent on a mission to find and bring back a dozen eggs, Lev and his cocky soldier sidekick encounter many odd assorted characters and many life-affirming and defying moments only to discover that the greatest gift they have is each other.
This is a hell of a read. It is by turns funny, sad, heartbreaking, torturous, uplifting, and ultimately satisfying. You will fly through this book as I did. It is a fast read, and you won’t want to waste a moment to put it down. And the good news is, and this maybe giving away the ending, but you will be smiling as you put this book down. It is a charmer, and I am in love with this book.
Go. Read it. Now.