Reading 2002 - 2007
January 2002: For my first book of the year, I read the
interesting-yet-disappointing
The Bureau and the Mole by David
Vise. This true-life story of the most significant spy in FBI history is fraught
with sex and spying and insight into the intelligence community. But it seems a
bit like a Pop Psych explanation of the behavior of a man whom you never really
get to know. Not a bad read, but.... not great. Then I read Jonathan Kellerman's
Flesh and Blood. Like most of his work, this was an Alex
Delaware mystery and if you don't already appreciate that particular
genre, I'm afraid I cannot do it justice. My second non-fiction work was The
Power of Babel by John
McWhorter. This clever and scholarly text explains quite a bit about the
origin, evolution and death of language. McWhorter's other work includes some provocative
views on race relations and affirmative action. I'm impressed by his rhetoric,
but I think he doesn't quite get it right, either.
February 2002: After seeing the film, I
had to read A
Beautiful Mind. Not only was Sylvia Nasar's book "better" than
the movie, but it helped me understand more about math! The art of biography
seldom demands an understanding of both higher mathematics and schizophrenia. A
book that I picked up with NO expectations and was pretty amazed by is Dirty
Havana Trilogy by the Cuban writer, Pedro Juan Gutierrez. This temporally
confused but fascinating book describes life in Havana in the Castro years. It
makes an interesting partner to Havana Bay (a Westerner's look) and Before Night
Falls (an exile's look). I predict a huge tourist boon for Cuba the moment that
Castro passes from the scene.
March 2002: Wow.. another weird
book. Steve Dyer gave me Lee Siegel's Love in a Dead Language for
Christmas. I still don't know what to make of it. It's both a post-modern novel,
a satire, a parody and who-knows-what else. Fascinating but just a bit difficult
to read. The combination of genres and deep jokes makes the non-linear structure
challenging. But it's definitely worth it! I stumbled on Julian
Barnes' England,
England and bought it at a local bookshop when they did not have History
of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters. England, England is a strange parody that pokes
fun at many aspects of modern identity. But in a bizarre way, the strangely
atavistic image of a future Britain is not terribly unappealing. And while the
story is not "real", it does capture a modern louche-ness rather well.
April 2002: Traveling makes
reading easy since time in the airport is longer than usual. I read a
surprisingly good book by Jake Arnott called The
Long Firm (this link is interesting but a bit harsh about the book).
Arnott writes a pretty tough story about petty crime in England. And this book
is entertaining from start to finish. The notion of a series of different
narrators advancing a storyline isn't completely novel, but in a way it
works to illustrate the truth/non-truth of what happens. The truly surprising
book of the year is The
Shadow Boxer by Steven Heighton. A lyrical first novel that brings
together the story of a poet and a pugilist.. and it's the same person! Another
great "out of nowhere" book was Anthony Giardina's Recent
History. This slim novel very artfully tells the story of a family
burdened with superficial success and unresolved issues. Yes, it's another
coming of age story (see The Shadow Boxer above), and it's not quite a
gorgeously written as the Shadow Boxer. But it has a David Leavitt quality to it
nevertheless. Although I started this book a couple of months ago, I just now
finished Kim Stanley Robinson's Years
of Rice and Salt. This ambitious historical fantasy imagines what might
have happened if Europe never recovered from the bubonic plague in the 1300s and
the Muslim and Chinese worlds filled in the vacuum. The writing is strong and
the metaphysics are good. But there's some degree of work required to get
through this long book. The narrative
of the book can get long-winded, but it's worth pushing on. Robinson is not a
shy storyteller even when he digresses from the "meat" of the
tale to make a technological or historical point.
May 2002: I saw Malcolm
Gladwell's The Tipping Point in a bookshop and purchased it on the basis
of various articles that I had seen in the New Yorker. Gladwell is a fine
non-fiction writer, and his thoughts about human behavior are quite interesting
to read. I do not agree with everything in the book, but there are some
interesting explanations for behaviors that I find puzzling (like smoking). After reading nothing
but rave reviews of Ian McEwan's Atonement, I brought this book to London
with me. I really did enjoy it, although it was one of those "universe in
microcosm" kind of books. The "action" occurs in 3 segments (plus
an epilogue) before and at the beginning of the Second World War. Small actions,
misinterpretations and minor crises mirror the major changes happening in
Britain in the late days of the Depression. The writing is masterly and moving.
But was the book enjoyable? You might have to decide for yourself.
June 2002: Taking just a month
away from updating and I have already forgotten some reading from June. I did
buy and read Catherine Millet's The Sexual Life of Catherine M. It was a
strange non-fiction reading experience. Slightly erotic and more than slightly
irritating, the book was weird even in the post "Sex and the City"
era. I don't recommend it, but I'm curious to hear what others thought about it.
July 2002: I started this month
with a new experience: books on tape. The first one I heard (ever!) was Elmore
Leonard's Tishimingo Blues (read excellently by Paul Rudd). The reading
was an eye (ear?) opener for me. With a minimum of special effects and great
voices, the book sprang to life in the car as I was driving to Canada. The story
was good and the writing was commendable, but I was blown away by the "oral
reading" experience. On the way home from Canada, I "read" Freedomland
by Richard Price. It was read by Joe Morton and I have to say that it was just
as good as the first book. While I still love the reading experience, this might
be a good way to be exposed to books when a long drive is contemplated and the
radio is an inconstant companion. Back to the printed page.... a very enjoyable
book was True Enough by Stephen
McCauley. This book that entwined the lives of two very different people
coming together (ostensibly) over a minor project but finding a deeper
connection was a real pleasure to read.
August 2002: To inaugurate my
reading for August, I got a copy of Lives of a Biologist by John
Tyler Bonner. Dr. Bonner was my college advisor and I was delighted to find
this book reviewed in the New York Times earlier this summer. The book is
delightful and chatty and insightful. A book that I started in July but just
finished was The
Cold Six Thousand by James Ellroy. This long book is set in the period
from the assassination of JFK to the assassination of RFK and every
historical event is part of a complicated and cynical web of conspiracies.
Ellroy's writing style is reminiscent of Tom Wolfe, but without Wolfe's warmth
and personal affection [yes, that IS a joke]. While I almost stopped reading the
book several times, I did work my way through it. My advice? If you're not
enjoying it by page 100, put it down and read something else. But it might just
appeal to you if you like reading about grisly murders and beatings.
September 2002: I had heard about
Prague by Arthur Phillips,
and since it was set in Budapest in the early 1990s, I wanted to read it. It was
enjoyable in a number of ways. The notion of having American expatriates as the
central characters was engaging since it showed Budapest as a business
opportunity, a romantic destination and a central character. But the joke of the
book is that Prague is "where it's at" for Eastern European
destinations so the expats feel that Budapest is a consolation prize rather than
a real destination with real people and problems. It's a pretty sad story in
many ways, but cleverly presented.
October 2002: Having read the
reviews of The Rules of Attraction (the movie), I was moved to read the
novel by Bret Easton Ellis. It was a funny book but a little jejune and not
entirely satisfying. The concept of having multiple first person narrators is a
bit jarring and a bit interesting. But is it just my imagination or does the
book simply run out of steam and stop for no particular reason? My next book was
He Kills Coppers which is another interesting ride on the Jake Arnott
train of fascinating criminal pathology. Unlike Rules, Coppers is a multilayered
look at self perception and circumstance. The fine line between inventing
yourself and being invented by your circumstances is explored deftly. And this
book does have a real ending.
November 2002: A slow month for
reading. On the way back from England, I bought and read Ballard's Super
Cannes. This dystopian novel about the future of office parks, gated
communities and the pampered elite was provocative but not brilliant. Ballard's
interests in violence and degradation do contrast with the pristine modern
environment. But to set this book up as a mystery makes it hard to marry the
concept of a strong plot driven story with that of a morality trail. I also
read, for the first time, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. This 40 year old
book still has a freshness about it. But it is also clear where some of the
commonly used rhetoric of the environmental movement comes from. Worth reading!
I finished the month with an incredible novel: Middlesex
by Jeff Eugenides. The story line of a person with an unusual form of
hermaphroditism is interesting in its own way. But the weaving in of the
immigrant experience, life in the middle third of the 20th century and the
subliminal connections among us is just amazing. The link above gives a series
of reviews of the novel and perhaps tells us more about what is wrong with
reviewing than the novel (though in fairness, most of the reviews are quite
positive). I am respectful of learned critics, but I am troubled by the
"advice-giving" review ("he spent too much time doing x when he
should have been doing y"). This is Eugenides' story. It moves the reader
and poses interesting, thoughtful questions. It is smart and sassy and
challenges us without making us feel impossibly slow and stupid. The books that
would have flowed from the various reviews might have been interesting ones, but
I wager they would not have topped this one!
December 2002
January 2003: I haven't read The
Lovely Bones, but I did stumble across Lucky by the same author, Alice
Sebold. While this telling of a rape and its aftermath would not seem like
"enough" to fill a whole book, it was really quite captivating. Life
in college is hard enough not to deal with a major crime, this book was more
than just a "true life crime" story. And the ending is perhaps the
most surprising part!
February 2003: Although I bought
this book at the airport to kill some time on a flight, I really enjoyed Philip
Kerr's Berlin Noir. This trilogy of novels published about 10 years ago
was set in Germany just before and after the Second World War. Not only is it a
great set of hard boiled private detective stories, it also captures the
environment of Nazi Germany very effectively.
March 2003: A guilty pleasure was
David Brock's Blinded by the Right, the tell-all tale of a gay man
working deep inside the conservative right wing movement who finds the error of
his ways and exposes some of the darkest secrets. Self-indulgent? Yes. But juicy
gossip! A much more spare book: When the Emperor was Divine by Julie
Otsuka tells the tale of a Japanese American family that underwent the
degradation of internment during the Second World War. It's written in a spare
style that is reminiscent of Japanese cuisine or rock gardens. But it's a
powerful work even sixty years after the (in this case fictional) events took
place. It gives pause in terms of the natural tendency to categorize and then
stereotype people by virtue of easy external characteristics. While this book is
not the usual kind that I refer to in this list, Breaking Out of Beginner's
Spanish is more than just a primer on Spanish. Joseph Keenan has made the
study of Spanish as a second language a nuanced and interesting experience. It
sheds great light on why English can be so hard to master (even by people of
great sophistication and subtlety).
April 2003: I picked up a book
called Digital Fortress thinking that Owen might enjoy it. The author,
Dan Brown, seemed to have stumbled on a book so "here and now" that it
might go out of date by the time you finished reading it. While the general plot
wasn't too bad, the romantic middle was much too gooey and pat for its own good.
Then I read The Quiet American by Graham Greene. I know that a remake of
the movie has recently been released and I was curious to read the novel first.
I guess the brevity of the book surprised me for starters. Yet it was a hard
read. I attribute this, in part, to Greene's style and in part to the passage of
50 years since its publication. It's at least a good book, but perhaps not a
great book. I could not resist The
Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus which I found
quite entertaining. Skewering the wealthy is always good sport, but in an insane
way, I actually found myself feeling sympathy for the spoiled rich mother
trying to hang onto her little piece of security and reality.
I heard a good review of The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown. I did not realize
that this was the same author as Digital Fortress, and I must agree with the
reviewer that it is a superior book. It has things in common with Umberto Eco's
The Name of the Rose although it is quite a bit easier to read. I would
recommend it as a good page turner (I got through it in about 24 hours). On my
trip to Florida, I also read Mario Vargas Llosa's The Feast of the Goat.
This compelling book is a piece of modern historical fiction. Taking the events
of the last year of the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic as the
basis for the novel, the author follows several paths from a woman (who was a
teen-ager at the time) to the high-ranking members of the government to Trujillo
himself and weaves an interesting story. I doubt that many North Americans
remember anything about this era in D.R. history and this book would be a good
introduction. It is timely in that "regime change" was the goal of the
coup that resulted in Trujillo's assassination, but it is not clear how things
would have worked out had nature taken its course.
May 2003: Amazingly Stephen Jay
Gould published quite an impressive book post-humously. The title, The
Hedgehog, The Fox and the Magister's Pox, doesn't give away the meaning. But
it's an interesting disquisition about the relationship of science to the
humanities. Gould's way of working this out is to explore the works of lesser
known figures from the Renaissance through the present while explaining how
science and religion/humanities have disputed and agreed about a reasonable
epistemology. I have always enjoyed Jane Smiley's work and I heard good things
about her newest novel Good Faith. This book is set in the 1980s and uses
the big real estate boom as the background to a Jane Austen-like story of social
mores. It was certainly a pleasant "read" but I must say that it
seemed like less than the sum of its parts. Not bad, but not incredible.
June 2003: Was it fate or just a
dumb accident that I stumbled on an old hard cover copy of Earthly Powers
while I was looking for something completely different? I read this book when it
first came along in 1980, and I distinctly remember the act of reading it..
curled in a chair when I was out sick from work. What I did not remember was the
plot! This is a heavily plotted novel and I feel that it holds up just a touch
less well since the plot says something about the 1970s (when the book was being
written) although the story line covers the entire first 2/3 of the twentieth
century. Anthony Burgess was a well regarded writer who became a superstar after
the conversion of A Clockwork Orange to a Stanley Kubrick movie. But Earthly
Powers is a better book and one that shows off the prodigious talent that he has
as both a writer and a thinker. It's easy to describe the plot line as a series
of events in the life of Kenneth Toomey. Toomey was a popular writer, playwright
and celebrity even though a part of him ached to be considered a genius. Through
his family, he became entangled in various parts of the art world and the world
of religion (for which he had little enthusiasm) even though his brother-in-law
became Pope. Toomey was a homosexual (the word he would have used) in
an era when that was not only dangerous but also foolhardy. In some ways he was
a precursor to the Zelig character in Woody Allen's movie of the same name. And
in some ways, he lived the life of Candide as a semi-innocent wandering the
earth and dealing with more sorrow and suffering than he needs. But you don't
feel sorry for Toomey since the world can, indeed, be a cruel place and he also
has his share of success. The deeper conflict in the book is the battle between
Pelagianism and Augustinianism -- is man born with original sin or does he
choose it? This would seem to be a difficult theme to narrate, but read this
book and see how entertaining it is. Almost everyone is "bad" in some
major way. But there is also a fair amount of courage and devotion. On a whim, I
picked up Lucky Jim at the airport bookstore while heading off to
Houston. This book is roughly my age and was felt to be one of the most
important comic novels of the 20th century. Its author, Kingsley Amis, was a
well regarded post-war British writer. I liked the book. It alternated between
feeling dated and very fresh. There was an "E. F. Benson" quality to
the book, but also a more contemporary cynical flair.
July 2003:
Whenever I travel, I find that I have loads of time to read. This month was no
exception. On trips to San Deigo and Alaska, I had so much time on planes and in
airports that I got a huge amount of reading done. In no particular order, here
are the books: The Russian Debutante's Handbook by Gary Shteyngart was a
funny and mordant book written from the point of view of a Russian-Jewish emigre
to the US. Everything was held up to his satirical viewpoint including the
strange and narcissistic attraction of Americans to the former Eastern bloc.
This makes a great bookend to Prague. I read a trio of books by Augusten
Burroughs. The first one was Sellavision which was a slightly funny
dig at television in general and the cult of direct sales via broadcasting in
particular. It seemed to be somewhat "hit or miss" in many of the
particulars. Much more impressive by the same author were two autobiographical
stories. The first one, Running with Scissors, was the tale of his youth.
He was raised in a very dysfunctional family. But as bad as that is, it gets
worse when he is essentially "exported" to live with his mother's
psychiatrist and his strange family. Any description of what happened would be
much less impressive than reading this clever book. The "follow-up"
book was Dry which details the life of a successful, gay alcoholic
advertising worker. This book was even darker than Running, but it felt real and
credible. I think it's a pretty good take on substance abuse and recovery. And
it does not pull punches. I read two gay-themed novels. The better of the two
was The Men from the Boys which was a successfully told narrative
blending together the events of the summer and the winter from the same year. It
was a year of change and yet the criss-crossing of the timelines was not
confusing. I found the book emotionally satisfying if somewhat sad. It's a
testament to the author, William J. Mann, to be able to make the narrator
sympathetic yet flawed in a way that resonated well. The other book was a
potboiler with the clever title, The Winter of our Discotheque. This book
by Andrew Beierle was a seamy tale of an attractive but vacuous Greek-American
lad from Florida who found great material success as a model but little
emotional satisfaction. The hero is weak and flawed, but the story has a very
"Inside Edition" quality as an overheated melodrama. I was entertained
but not overwhelmed by Bill Bryson's book, A Short History of Nearly
Everything. It's cute, but I'm not sure it's very good science writing.
Perhaps it is more in the tradition of light satire such as written by David
Barry.
August 2003: After last month's
book orgy, I decided to slow down a bit. I read a short short, interesting
non-fiction book called Talk of the Devil by Riccardo Orizio. It's a
series of slightly strange essays/reports about a collection of real life
villains. These people who range from Idi Amin to Baby Doc Duvalier. The most
chilling aspect of these reports is the complete lack of acknowledgement that
anything bad happened under their watch or that they were at all responsible.
From the dictator's viewpoint, only the positive aspects of their rule were
notable and any degree of suffering was unfortunately but unavoidable. Most of
them lived lavishly but they felt it was their due (irrespective of the wealth
of the average citizen). This attitude is incredibly reminiscent of CEOs who
feel that they are entitled to any amount of money no matter how poor the
company performance because other CEOs get just as much. Next, I tackled a pair
of books by Michel Houellebecq -- Platform
and The Elementary Particles. The books are fascinating to read since
they are novels of ideas that also carry people along for a weird and
unpredictable ride. I'm not sure that they are especially easy to read in the
sense that they carry you along in a page turning plot. But if "nothing
happening" could be considered enough to keep Seinfeld on the air for 7
years, I think it's more than enough for two books. Both novels contain
characters that are hard to love and impossible to hate. They make no claims or
amends, and they seem passionless even as they work their way through the few
intimate relationships they can have. While Houellebecq' world is a vale of
tears, it's an interesting vale worth at least a short visit: A Michelin 1 star
vale at least. To close out August, I read Tony Horwitz' Blue Latitudes;
a travelogue/series of essays on Captain James Cook and his nautical adventures
in the Pacific Ocean and around Antarctica. I had not special affinity for Cook
but I did find this book fascinating. Cook's journeys took place around the time
of the American Revolution and reshaped the European image of the world. Was he
a monster, a hero or neither? Probably an able seaman with some extraordinary
talents, but much a man of his day.
September 2003: This was the
month of the Pat Barker trilogy. These books (Regeneration, Eye in the
Door,
Ghost Road) were written in the 1990s and tell a series of stories that took
place in World War I era Britain. Barker gets so much right in terms of
understanding human psychology, and the tale is largely about people who are
psychically wounded by the stress of war. There are 4 main characters that work
their way through the books. The most prominent 2 are Billy Prior and Dr.
William Rivers. Prior was hospitalized for serious shell shock and his treating
physician was the psychiatrist Dr. Rivers. The two of them permeate all three
books in the series. The other 2 main characters are Siegfried Sassoon and
Wilfred Owen. These characters are drawn from real people but Barker has dared
to extend them into fully realized fictional characters. The books are sad but
hard to put down. Very entertaining was Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars
Who Tell Them. This sounds strident, but Franken's combination of humor and
reporting is disarming. It doesn't hurt that I believe in his politics too.
October 2003: I had read some
fairly middling reviews of David Leavitt's book, Martin Bauman. But in contrast
to the tepid attitude of the reviewers, I loved it. Not only is the book
beautifully written, it has a charming capacity to contrast surface with
meaning. Leavitt draws on his personal experience as a "gay writer"
who achieved a certain level of fame/notoriety early in life. But the characters
spring from real people and become interesting, flawed, challenging literary
figures. Most reviewers seized on the relationship of Bauman (the
protagonist) to his literary mentor, Stanley Flint. Flint is a great character,
but I was moved by the plight of Bauman who is clearly talented but dwarfed by
the expectations that surround him. Whether it was the 80's, the disintegration
of the nuclear family, the strange emergence of neo-conservatism, the book is
like a "My Dinner with Andre" showing the friction between art and
expectation. As a follow-up to his excellent Where the Boys Are, William
J. Mann wrote The Men from the Boys. this book is OK, but not anywhere
are good as the earlier one. First, it uses a different and less satisfying
narrative approach. Second, it has a "Perils of Pauline" plot line
running through it. Third, it tries to make the gay circuit party scene look
both intolerable and fascinating at once. It's a bit like an after school
special. On the other hand, it's a compelling read and worth the time invested.
November 2003: A very quick (but
cute read) was Alan Cumming's Tommy's Tale. Cumming is an actor and
writer with a light touch. This book set in contemporary England highlights the
experience of a young man coming to terms with adulthood and its complexities. A
fairly light-hearted romp through modern gay life, but also a fair amount of
reflection. The non-fiction work, Word Freak, delves deep into the world
of competitive Scrabble. And what a world it is! Not a pretty one. Stefan Fatsis
is a journalist who writes about the business of sports and his take on the
weird landscape of competitive Scrabble is compelling. Whenever I find a Sara
Paretsky book, I make a point of picking it up and reading it. Her latest, Blacklist
is typical in that it uses events of today (and their ripples) to reflect on
events of the past (and their more extensive ripples). The world of Paretsky's
heroine, V. I. Warshawski, is as tough as that of any private investigator. And
the availability of the Internet does not make life easier since information
that is important is still garbled and hidden. Paretsky also makes clear her
dislike of and distrust of the Patriot Act. Blacklist isn't Paretsky's best, but
it's very much worth reading.
December 2003: Busy month, so not
quite as much time for books. I reread Stranger in a Strange Land which I
had first read in my teens. It seemed seminal and amazingly sophisticated at the
time (copyright date, 1961). But it feels tired and preachy now. There's a Hugh
Hefner quality to the world being described, and the influence of cultish
religions is well anticipated. But the disappointing part is the preachy,
pseudo-intellectual prattle that fills almost every page. The book is one huge
deus ex machina. Heinlein's take on the state of sexual liberation is
interesting since it predates most of the women's movement. In his future, cars
can fly, but women really can't take big leadership roles (and they really do
have to be pretty). One of the interesting moments in the book is when a
character makes a reference to a famous assassination and uses the example of
Huey Long. In some ways the assassination of JFK changed things in a way that
probably precluded the whole story line of Stranger. And the reason I reread the
book was to refresh myself on the meaning of the word "grok" which I
think I understand less well now than before!
January 2004: I don't know how I
avoided reading The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, but I found it
at Barbara's Bookstore (at the airport) and read it on the way to England. It's
a terrific book. Really a wonderful story of the "Jazz Age" but with a
very 'now' type resonance. In some ways that's an unfair notion since much of
20th century American fiction derives from Gatsby -- the ultimate story of
self-definition and self-deception. But I was engrossed. On the way back, I read
The Great Pint Pulling Olympiad by Roger Boylan. This weird novel is set
in Ireland and is written is an odd heavily foot-noted style by an American of
Irish descent. It was entertaining but not my favorite book.
February 2004: OK, I have to
admit that I have guilty pleasures in the book world and the Eszterhas book, Hollywood
Animal is one of them. It's far from a great book.. in fact it's probably
far from a good book. But it's a nasty stew of Hollywood insider stuff combined
with macho bravado and topped off with a hearty dose of weepy sentimentalism. It
probably should be illegal for a screenwriter to write an autobiography, but I'm
glad he did. Because it's pretty interesting reading -- warts and all. A more
cerebral book is Natural Born Cyborgs by Andy Clark. Clark has clearly
thought about the connection with people and the environment and has an
interesting thesis that we are a species that intrinsically is build for
external connections. Not totally convincing in all its particulars, but I think
Clark has time on his side. It took a while for Amazon to find a copy of Crum
to ship to me. I had heard Lee Maynard interviewed on Fresh Air and I liked his
style. The book -- a dark coming of age story in Appalachia in the 1950s -- was
interesting and cute. It's brief but it is somewhat reminiscent of the magical
realists of South and Central America.
March 2004: I always seem to
enjoy reading most when I travel. So on my visit to Sarasota, I undertook a new
venture: to read a full novel in Spanish. I picked up a book called No Se Lo
Digas a Nadie which is written by a Peruvian writer named Jaime Bayly. The book
was entertaining and I hadn't even realized that I saw the movie on which was
based on it. It was a pretty quick go (considering the length) since it was
breezy and conversational. And it was a good review of the some of the
"dirty words" that I've been reading about. I also reread (for
the umpteenth time) Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. This
book is beginning to seem a bit dated although it has charm and energy to spare.
What's most interesting is how many people stop and tell you how much they
enjoyed reading the book. I have a renewed sense of the pain of Toole in writing
this book and never seeing it published or hailed as the kind of modern
picaresque classic that it has become. But I fear that it is beginning to look a
bit long in the tooth as life passes by the "lovable losers" of New
Orleans circa the 1960s. My boss gave me a great book from 1971: Darwin and
the Beagle by Alan Moorehead. It's a heavily illustrated book of Darwin's
life (with emphasis on his 5 years on the Beagle). Entertaining and attractive
and a bit of a story about the mid-20th century as well!
April 2004: Something I find at
the bookshop that looked intriging was Dancer by Colum McCann. This odd
book is part biography and part fiction and it is based on the life of Rudolph
Nureyev. While I am no expert on his life, the book seems to have captured his
essence and spirit without being cloying. A pleasant surprise! The latest
Jonathan Kellerman book, Therapy, was another decent Alex Delaware
psychological yarn. I don't know why I enjoy this series, but I do. I wouldn't
describe them as predictable since their essence is to be confusing until the
denouement. But they are patterned in a way that approaches a blend of Oprah and
a hard-bitten detective novel.
May 2004: A book that I had been
meaning to get around to but finally read was Mapping Human History by
Steve Olson. This entertaining book charts the connections among groups of
people over time and space. Olson uses apparent racial differences, language
groups and cultures to track the movement of Homo sapiens from their
African origin to populate the world. Very friendly to the reader, but not at
all dumb. On my trip to Switzerland I read several books. The first was A
Ship Made of Paper by Scott Spencer. This novel set in contemporary New York
state is a gripping read. It has elements of a love story, but it's also a
social commentary (though not quite Jane Austen). I read Jonathan Franzen's book
of essays, How to Be Alone. This collection of previously published works
doesn't really cohere. But Franzen is a bright and thoughtful man and none of
the essays is unpleasant. After hearing an interview with George Pelecanos, I
bought his first novel, Right as Rain. This detective story is set in
Washington, DC and involves a private investigator, Derek Strange. Strange is an
African-American ex-cop and his perspective is interesting. Pelecanos is from DC
and his familiarity with the city is a very important aspect of the book.
June 2004: Started June with
another Pelecanos book: Hell to Pay. This is in the same Derek Strange
series as the one from May. Not a bad series, but I'm not sure I'm going to read
every single one. I also picked up David Sedaris' latest book, Dress Your
Family in Corduroy and Denim. This collection of stories has already been
heard on NPR and is typical Sedaris.. funny, trenchant and moving. Oddly, I've
heard enough of his readings to hear (in my mind) Sedaris reading this stories
as I read them. Weird! Speaking of funny... I read a book entitled Seven
Against Georgia by Eduardo Mendicutti. This Spanish book (translated into
English) is absolutely hysterical as a send up regarding the Georgia sodomy case
that went to the US Supreme Court. The notion is that the "Chief of
Police" of Georgia would just have to hear about the pleasures of erotic
homophilic bliss to understand why the anti-sodomy campaign in just plain wrong.
Of course the style of story-telling has a lot to do with the humor since it's
based on the Decameron with 7 ditzy guys relating their tales of connubial
satisfaction.
July 2004: I keep getting
reminded about Catcher in the Rye, so I decided to reread this
"classic." Salinger's novel from the early 1950s has a way of
captivating audiences... especially young, disillusioned people. I could not
believe how badly I had misremembered it. On the surface, it is the story of a
young man who is falling into an emotional void. Like many other young people,
his affective state is unstable and his behavior is puzzling. But Salinger dares
to suggest that both the world is crazy as well as Holden. A quick and fun
read is The Dumas Club by Arturo Perez-Reverte. This novel is a mystery
and a puzzle that reminds one of the The Name of the Rose or Incidence of the
Signpost. Not having read Dumas in a million years, I wasn't completely up to
speed with the Three Musketeers analogy, but I found the book quite charming. As
part of my Darwin "kick" I read The Beak of the Finch by
Jonathan Weiner. This excellent book is about 10 years old but it's one of the
most engaging books on science that I have ever read. Highly recommended!
August 2004: There has been much
talk about Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi. This book had the
reputation of a high end chick-lit read and its popularity would seem to go
along with that. But it was truly interesting. And while I do not think of it as
an authoritative account of events in Iran since the Islamic state was declared,
there's no doubt that it shows the tribulations and privations of living in a
sophisticated country that took a certain perverse pleasure in turning back the
clock to punish some of its most accomplished and talented citizens for a
religious orgy that became a totalitarian nightmare. My next book was very
enjoyable.. one of the best novels I've read in a long while: The Time
Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. This clever book is a first novel,
but the author is a talented writer who uses a science fiction premise in a very
literary way. The main characters are Clare (the title character) and her
husband, Henry who has the ability/curse to travel back and forth through time
with no control of where or when he goes. The way that people interact in real
time can be studied in a setting where some of the characters bring knowledge of
each other in places that would not ordinarily be available. But in another way,
the book studies the impact and essence of memory and longing in a very creative
way. And it looks at the ways the past impacts the present and the present, the
future. My follow-up to this book was the contemporary fable, Troll, by
Johanna Sinisalo. Troll is set in modern Finland and imagines that trolls are
really a species of Nordic mammals with human like qualities but not from the
primate lineage. The central relationships are among a group of gay men in a
small Finnish city (and an odd Filipina), but the non-verbal troll has the
really good part. There's a "heart of darkness" quality as the
existence of the troll in the midst of urban Finland exposes more of people's
desires than they would normally express. As an additional fillip, Sinisalo
includes a variety of mythic material from a variety of sources as "in
between chapter" stuff. A very quick read, but fun.
September 2004 I read Terry
Gross' book, All I Did Was Ask. Terry Gross is one of my favorite
journalists. Her pleasant and calm style bring out much from her subjects. I
learn a lot from hearing her -- some of it is very useful professionally as a
way of getting people to open up about things! I had heard about The Namesake
on NPR and I was intrigued to read it. The author, Jhumpa Lahiri, is an
Indian-American writer with a prize winning collection of short stories. This
novel is set in contemporary times and follows the development of a family that
emigrates from Bengal to the US. The lives of the characters are informed by
their ethnic past, the influence of the US and the immigrant experience. In
particular, the son (named Gogol for interesting reasons) has a journey that is
touched by considerable heartache and pain. I loved the ending of the book --
not a sugar-coated story, but a touching and realistic tale still in progress.
October 2004 I started reading,
against my better judgment, Rutherford's huge novel called and about, London.
This 1000+ page story isn't great. But it's a pretty interesting page-turner as
it follows some families through 2000 years of London's history. It seems well
researched and it's hard to read in large chunks although it's something of a
melodrama. While I read this book a few months ago, I cannot recall the exact
date, so I'll mention it now: The Dante Club by Mathew Pearl. This
"historical murder mystery" was quite a fascinating read. I don't know
whether it was The Name of the Rose or some other book that led to a series of
interesting speculations about the possible actions of historical characters in
quotidian activities. But The Dante Club, set in the Boston of the 19th century,
has Longfellow and a bunch of other poets and artists as detectives! Heaven help
us. But it's a fun book.
November 2004 In the Reykjavik
airport, Owen bought me a copy of Iceland's Bell, a novel by the 1955
Nobel Prize winning author, Halldor Laxness. Iceland's Bell is a historical
novel set during a difficult time in Iceland's history -- when it was
administered by Denmark. Starvation was the order of the day. What is somewhat
surprising to contemporary readers is how important legal affairs were, even in
this time of privation. The book traces a long legal case (echo of Les
Miserables) that not only ruins several lives of people closely involved but
brings into question some of the higher level people in the Icelandic and Danish
governments. The book has an "old fashioned" literary style and is
quite pleasant to read. My next book was referred to me from the reading list at
salon.com. The Hamilton Case by Michelle de Cretser is a novel set in
20th century Sri Lanka (at a time when it was Ceylon). The book is told in the
form of a long flashback in the life of the main character, Sam Obeysekere, who
is a lawyer and minor political figure at the time of the end of British rule.
He's a somewhat humorless "play by the rules" kind of colonial -- not
a very sympathetic soul. And yet there is something endearing about his
pettiness and his dry disappointment with life that touches the reader. The
Hamilton case refers to a minor criminal scandal that Sam managed to solve
during his youth (or did he?) In many ways this entertaining novel with chapters
that are really bite-sized is also a great tale of perils of living in colonial
and post-colonial times. The Columnist is a novel by Jeffrey Frank that
was recommended by David Sedaris at a reading that I attended earlier this
month. The book is a brilliant morsel that is told as a fictional autobiography
of a media pundit who has very limited talent except as a name-dropper and boor.
He is, of course, lionized in Washington DC where almost everything he does
turns to crap. He's just too self-involved to see it. It's a wicked and funny
book. Some liken it to Thackeray, but I was thinking more of Patrick Dennis. I
have been looking for Permanent Midnight for a while. I don't know why
I'm attracted to "bad boy" nonfiction, but Jerry Stahl, the author of
this autobiographical book is a very, very bad boy. He's a major drug user
despite some very serious consequences. Although he is now clean and sober, his
book lays out the highs and lows of poly-substance abuse in a very graphic way.
And since he's a screenwriter as well as a novelist, the book is a page-turner.
I have been a fan of James Wolcott's blog for some time, so I enjoyed reading Attack
Poodles, his hilarious send-up of the poseurs who have dominated the
news-entertainment part of our communal bandwidth. He is a funny guy and he can
skewer with the best of them. While I'm not sure there's a lot more there than
my favorite liberal stuff, the book is a hilarious read. I followed this book
with Port Mungo a novel by Patrick McGrath. This book is an interesting
read although it got very mixed reviews. It has a gothic quality although it's
set in the 20th century (largely in sunny and/or busy places). Stylistically, it
uses the "unreliable narrator" motif and has some very dark currents.
I liked it quite a bit.
December 2004 Since I so enjoyed
Lahiri's novel, I went back to read her Pulitzer Prize winning short story
collection, The Interpreter of Maladies. This book of evocative tales
also deals with the relationship of India and the US as told through a
population of people with one foot in each culture. I also read a novel by Jerry
Stahl, Plainclothes Naked. This implausible but entertaining book shows
Stahl's affinity for the rough and drug-addled world of marginalized people. It
is partly confessional and partly bawdy tale. A good read for an airplane
journey.
January 2005 I found a trilogy by
Richardson Davies that I had not yet read. The Salterton Trilogy is a
post-WWII series of books about a modest size Ontario town and the denizens
therein. Davies is great, but I got only as far as book 1, Tempest Tost
which is about an amateur staging of The Tempest. Clever, yes. But frothier than
the usual Davies. I read the new collection by Augusten Burroughs, Magical
Thinking. This collection of essays was highly readable. Like David Sedaris,
Burroughs is a gay writer with an interesting sensibility. Like Sedaris, he is
in a long term stable relationship, and his work is informed by the sense that
he has come along far in his life journey without losing the essence of what
makes his voice interesting and unique. While many such essay collections have a
somewhat "gripe about stuff" quality, Burroughs keeps things readable
and lively. Not bad for this literary form. I had to read the Man Booker-prize
winning A Line of Beauty by the stylish Alan Hollinghurst. This book is
stylish and incredibly subtly written. In a superficial sense it can be read as
a contemporary "drawing room story" or a comedy of manners (or perhaps
manors). But there is tons of other stuff happening. It's a visit to another
planet where the air is not healthy but the views so exquisite that we can
suffer the discomfort. Hard to put down.
February 2005 I had been looking
forward to Jared Diamond's most recent book, Collapse. It's a thick
hard-cover tome that dances around the history of various human societies that
have collapsed for one reason or the other (usually for multiple reasons) as
well as a few that survived difficult odds. In addition to tickling my
fascination with Easter Island, Diamond explores the Norse colonization of
Greenland in the middle ages. This topic was exploited by Jane Smiley in her
epic, The Greenlanders, so it seemed like familiar material. I like the book and
its thoughtful adult approach. In the airport, I picked up the Jon Krakauer
book, Under the Banner of Heaven. It got somewhat mixed reviews, but I
found it mesmerizing and scary. It confirms my general sense about
"organized religion" but at the same time it makes for an unsettling
sympathy for the victims of religion.. even as they victimize others with their
faith. In a casual stroll through Barnes and Noble, I found a remaindered copy
of Patrick Gale's Rough Music. This book is a gem -- cleverly assembled,
well written and emotionally moving. The trick of moving back and forth between
2 time lines is an old one. But I'm a sucker for it since it creates a powerful
anticipation. The stories play with the pliability of memory, the nature of
betrayal and attraction and the social roles we play (and often fight).
April 2005 Obviously March was
not a good month for reading and April was hardly better. However, I found a
quick read in Joseph Gangemi's Inamorata. This novel set in 1920s
Philadelphia is quite a page turner. It's not quite a mystery, but it's about
mysterious events that may or may not be paranormal. Good first novel for a
young writer.
May 2005 I enjoyed reading Brian
Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos which tracks along with the PBS series
shown recently. Greene is a colorful writer who is reminiscent of Steven Jay
Gould -- but in the field of physics. There were moments where I got lost, but
for the most part, it was a lucid and entertaining treatise on time, space the
cosmos and everything. At Heathrow I picked up a translation of Leonardo
Padura's Havana Red. I don't know why I enjoy reading books about
contemporary Cuba so much, but this was an interesting mix of detective story
and cultural analysis. A summary of the plot-line would not be helpful since
it's a story that exists on several layers and the actual murder mystery at the
core is much less important than in most mysteries.
June 2005 I had been looking
forward to reading Ian McEwan's Saturday for a while. I really enjoyed
it. In some large part it wove together some of the interplay between art and
medicine without insulting either one. It also had a neurosurgeon as a reluctant
hero and that was interesting in and of itself. And finally it touched up the
problems we ar having trying to prioritize terrorism, personal security and
freedom in the post 9/11 world.
July 2005 In one of those
"pick it up on a whim" deals, I read an interesting Spanish book The
Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. This interesting book was quite a
best-seller in Europe and details parallel stories taking place in Barcelona in
the 1930s and the 1950s. The central thread is a rare copy of a book by a
talented but somewhat unheard of writer. And the book is a paean to books and
book lovers everywhere. I also reread Listening to Prozac by Peter
Kramer. This is a fascinating book that touches upon some of the significant
points addressed by modern psychopharmacology. And it's a great read too.
August 2005 Generally this was a
slow month for reading. I managed to get through Against Depression by
Peter Kramer. It was nowhere near as interesting as the Prozac book. Kramer is
clearly a smart man. But his arguments in this book are more tendentious and
strained than in the previous book. Unlike Prozac where he was making original
observations, this book feels heavy and yet slight at the same time. For no
particular reason, I also read The Brain Museum by Brian Burrell. This
book was a quick read and full of nuggets of interest. Burrell takes a page from
the Stephen J. Gould approach and ties in the quirky history of brain
dissection/interpretation with modern concerns and issues. A fun book!
September 2005 I started
September with 1491 the fascinating book on pre-Columbian America by
Charles Mann. Much of the material was familiar from prior readings, but the
excellent writing style and the detail provided by Mann are fascinating. If only
1/2 of his hypotheses prove true, it will radically reshape how the "old
world" thinks about the "new world." My boss gave me a book of
short stories by John Murray called A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies.
This first book is quite beautiful and wistful. Most of the stories are sad and
they are all well constructed. Murray's toolkit includes a lot of references to
India and to abandonment. The stories are somewhat melancholy, but that does not
make them hard to read. A very engaging and surprisingly funny piece of fluff is
Cathy Crimmins' How the Homosexuals Saved Civilization. Under the humor
though, there is a somewhat interesting and at least debatable theme. It took
about 2 hours to read, but it was worth every minute.
October 2005 Lots of travel and
lots of reading! My guiltiest pleasure was reading Graham Norton's So Me.
Was it completely forgettable? Yeah.. but still a bit salacious. And it explains
a lot about his television programs. Another British book was Tim Relf's Stag.
This tale of debauch and drink set in Newcastle was.. well it was pretty
discouraging. But it seemed to capture a bit of laddishness that doesn't seem
completely unique to Britain although it thrives there. On the non-fiction side
of things, there was Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, an
amusing deconstruction of modern life. This sharp book of essays and thoughts
resonates although I honestly think that Chuck speaks for a younger
generation... but one that is pretty irrelevant to the hippest, i.e., youngest,
adult generation around now. In The Great Influenza, John Barry tells a
complex tale of politics, science, war and infection. His story isn't perfect,
but I'll wager there's plenty of information new to readers.. even those with a
good sense of history. I'm not sure I agree with everything, but I think this
book also gives the clearest sense of the development of modern American
medicine that I've ever read. For an effort to improve my Spanish in Ecuador, I
read Isabel Allende's Mi Pais Inventado. This breezy story is a
combination memoir, travelogue and history of Chile. Quite an entertaining book.
In anticipation of watching the movie, I read Andre Dubus' House of Sand and
Fog. I had no particular expectations, but it was a compelling read until
the last 1/4. So I'd say worthwhile but depressing.
November 2005 A busy month at
work.. no travel.. not much reading. Inspired by the movie, Capote, I read In
Cold Blood. I don't know whether I read this book a long time ago, but I
don't think so. It was so influential in its day, I may have avoided it when I
came "of age" to read such a book simply because of over-exposure. Now
the book reads like.. well it's strange because it's simultaneously incredibly
modern and dated. Like a ranch house that's been decorated in Danish modern
furniture.. timeless but constrained by its time. Nevertheless, an important
book that set the scene for so much that followed. Not just "true
crime" stories, but the weaving of fact into fiction through its
manipulation and clever presentation. An extreme argument could be made that
reality television could not exist without In Cold Blood showing the way to take
dry facts and weave them into major art!
December 2005 Lots of running
around related to the holidays, but not too much reading. I really enjoyed
Philip Roth's The Plot Against America. The reviews were good to
excellent, but the book was really such an interesting read in the era of a
presidency and body politic that look much more like the fictional America Roth
presents than anyone would have dared imagine half a decade ago.
January 2006 The only book that I
read in its entirety this month was a rather diabolically bad Fingering the
Family Jewels by Greg Lilly. The title does not lead on to expect much, and
still, there is disappointment. The book is a limp visitation of the modern
south by a gay man who managed to escape Charlotte for the "greener
pastures" of San Francisco. In an odd way, it's a bit of a paean to
Charlotte, and that is an uncomfortable notion to come from the word processor
of a gay man. However this Charlotte might be one that Armistad Maupin could
describe as the easternmost suburb of San Francisco. Yes, there's homophobia,
but aren't the buttermilk biscuits divine?
February 2006 The new Julian
Barnes novel, Arthur and George, got great reviews. Since I'm a big
Barnes fan, I picked it up. It took me a while to "get into" the book
as the beginning was choppy (intentionally so). But as the story progressed, it
took on a life of its own. There was more comment about the world of today than
would seem possible for a book set at the beginning of the 20th century when the
world was "modern" but in many ways quite distinct from our own world.
The small town was a meaningful unit then.. not just a bit of suburb or a quaint
farm preserved mostly for show. And the subjectivity of human experience and
interpretation has not changed. Nor has the intransigence of the larger world
(whether government, mores, etc.). Although I had heard about Philip Pullman's
Dark Materials Trilogy, I never got around to reading it. But... it's great. At
least the first book, The Golden Compass is a marvelous story that is
appropriate for adolescents but charming for adults. I'm looking forward to the
next two books.
March 2006 This is the month when
I finished the Pullman trilogy. The second (The Subtle Knife) and third (The
Amber Spyglass) take the material in new directions. But the totality of the
books is very satisfying. They affirm the possibilities of spirituality without
formal religion. In the books, the various groups of people have radically
different belief systems, but the successful ones can incorporate and appreciate
diversity. The failures are the ones locked into a hegemony that constrains
growth and leads to a miserable zero-sum game. I also read a crazy picture book
by Erika Lopez, Flaming Iguanas. It doesn't sound too promising to read a
description, but it's funny and clever. Trust me.
April 2006 First books can be hit
or miss.. especially personal stories (fictionalized, of course) by young
writers. But I can give a pretty strong "thumbs up" to Josh
Kilmer-Purcell's I'm Not Myself These Days. While the genre of
alcohol/drug-fueled coming of age in New York City books by young writers is now
an established and respected one, Kilmer-Purcell does seem to kick it up another
notch. More particularly, it is in the tradition that true creativity (applied
to advertising and drag) probably flourishes in a shabby demi-monde. I'm not one
to argue with that. Following this book was the extremely well-written Stephen
MacCauley's Alternatives to Sex. This crisp 300 page book has a lot to
say about the role of sex in contemporary American life. But it has even more to
say about self-image, the masks that we wear and place on others and the
conflicts between our public and private selves. While this book is not and does
not aspire to be autobiographical, it does hit many of the same notes as other
books by the same author. So these are themes/truths that he feels comfortable
in developing. I recommend it. Since I'm an addict of the Alex Delaware stories
of Jonathan Kellerman, I had to read the latest installment, Gone. It's
ok, but not top drawer. The trouble here is that the "B" story
(Delaware's personal life) is somewhat limp and predictable.
May 2006 A tiny coda to Pullman's
trilogy is a weird book called Lyra in Oxford. It would make no sense
without having read pretty much the entire trilogy. And even so... is it a short
story or a parable or just a fragment of a larger piece? Hmmm.... Because there
was travel, there was reading. A blockbuster of a book came to me almost by
chance: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. This fascinating book is actually
6 books in one. Each book has its unique voice and style.. but they all
interdigitate and add up to more than the sum of the parts. Outstanding. On a
more minor note, a British book called Brown Boys in Chocolate that
almost defies description. Paul Southern has written a dark and cynical novel in
which almost all the characters come to a bad ending (in relatively little
time). This kind of book is practically a British specialty though others have
done it better. A book that started out well and fizzled toward the last third
was One Big Damn Puzzler by John Harding. This messy book tells the story
of an unspoiled Polynesian island that.. well, gets spoiled.. by the best of
intentions. It's pretty predictable and a bit over the top. To finish off the
month, I read a surprisingly good book by Ben Elton, The First Casualty.
This WWI story is interesting as a revisionist historical drama and pretty much
of a page turner (though more highbrow that other airport books).
June 2006 Speaking of airport
books.. one of the oddest that I purchased was in the Houston airport on the way
back from Honduras. Entitled In the Wake of The Plague by Norman Cantor,
this book is partly medical history and mostly social history. The specifics of
the Black Death have been reviewed in many books. But the changes that followed
this pandemic (and the various other things that accompanied it like climate
change) shaped European and world history in fascinating ways. One is never sure
if part of the story is exaggerated or "spun" to favor the author's
thesis. But it's a compelling and short read. Since I am a total Sara Paretsky
fan, I had to read her latest book, Fire Sale. I think this is one of the
best offerings in a consistent and entertaining series. I am almost embarrassed
to admit that I read Center Square by Steve Wilson and Joe Florenski.
Yes, it's a poorly written biography of a forgettable celebrity, but... it just
seems so appropriate and deserving.
July 2006 With travel comes
reading. In no particular order: The Romanian by Bruce Benderson. This
odd and interesting semi-autobiographical book was compelling and a bit scary.
It's a difficult book to describe.. on the face of it, it tells the story of an
obsession of an American gay man for a straight, Romanian hustler. But it's
really more than that. It's like the biography of an obsession. In a more
disappointing vein, Chuck Klosterman's follow-up book to Sex, Drugs and Cocoa
Puffs was kind of a high concept auto-biographical essay called Killing
Yourself to Live. The premise of the book was that Klosterman was sent on a
mission to explore the places where seminal rock figures died. Yeah, that's
right. Just the places. And on the way he has epiphanies about himself, the
world, etc. There are some very smart and interesting passages, but overall it's
a bit dull. Another book with great potential was Jon Fasman's The
Geographer's Library. This novel was oddly structured with chapters
alternating in the present and a historical review of past events. The theme
tying together the 2 parts of the book was the idea of a collection of ancient
objects with special importance. The objects play a role in the
"present" but were of varied provenance, and that's what the
flash-back part is about. Frankly, as clever as it was, it seemed to run out of
steam frequently with the interruptions in the "present" story. But it
was generally a page turner and a pleasant read. Switching back to non-fiction,
I stumbled across Euclid in the Rainforest by Joseph Mazur. This treatise
on mathematics and probability was a surprisingly fun book. It's good, now and
again, to tackle something different and Mazur's book was fairly "bite
size" in its approach to mathematics, logic and probability.
August 2006 I always enjoy
reading Julian Barnes, and for some reason I ordered an older book, Talking
it Over. It's not a great book. And one has the feeling that it's been
"done" before and since. But the overlapping viewpoints are done
effectively. The characters are a bit "stiff" but that doesn't detract
much from the fun of bringing them together and having them tell their flawed
stories. I suppose that this was much fresher 15 years ago when the book was
first published. As a follow-up to his Dante Club, Matthew Pearl wrote The
Poe Shadow. This interesting fictional book tackles some odd elements
related to the death of Edgar Poe. I found the book to have a very slow
beginning, but it picked up steam about half-way through and was quite a good
yarn by the end.
September 2006 I opened the month
with a fascinating biography of my hero, Charles Darwin. David Quammen's The
Reluctant Mr. Darwin falls short of hagiography and seems to get the
essential details right. Of course Darwin has been written about so much,
Quammen's task was as much to stay succinct as it was to get the ideas across.
And he was highly successful in both ventures. As a follow-up to last months'
Talking it Over, I read Love, etc. which is literally a follow-up novel
in the same style. It advances the story line. Does it give closure? About as
much as the topic deserves. Perhaps, more importantly, it gives balance. And
oddly enough, it's a more hopeful book. On my trip to Holland, I picked up the
first two books of John Updike's Rabbit series: Rabbit Run and Rabbit
Redux. Fantastic. They were written 10 years apart and I can't wait to read
the next two books (also written 10 years apart!). On a whole other note, I read
James St. James Disco Bloodbath (now retitled Party Monster after the
not-very-popular movie of the same name). It's a breezy account of drug
addiction, mayhem and murder. No, really! Not a bad read, but I think I must be
getting old and jaded because these stories don't do as much for me as they used
to. And to put a book-end onto September, I read Michael Shermer's Why Darwin
Matters. Shermer is a psychologist who came to believe in Darwin after
starting off from a creationist, evangelical place. Interesting, but a bit
argumentative (by nature).
October 2006 I started the month
with an old Dorothy Sayres book, The Nine Tailors. This elegant tale of
murder in the church's bell tower is not a "fast read" like much
detective fiction. It's an observation of English country life between the wars.
Quite a fun book despite the excess of change ringing elements. Then it's back
to Updike. Book 3 in the Rabbit series, Rabbit is Rich, is a continuation
of the chronicle of the fictional Harry Angstrom and the good folks of the
Reading, PA, area. Like the predecessors, it's a powerful book that seemingly
touches upon routine aspects of life but also tells a story as deep as King
Lear's. And now Rabbit is at Rest. The final complete book in the Rabbit
series takes place just before 1990 and shows the family in its usual state of
dysfunction. But this is the most elegiac of the series and perhaps the most
hopeful (oddly!).
November 2006 I spoke too soon
about the end of Rabbit. There is one more Rabbit book: Rabbit Remembered
also by Updike. This novella follows the series and takes place about 10 years
after the death of Rabbit. Without the central character, it's not quite as
compelling as the earlier books. But it does shed light on "what
happened" to the rest of the crew. And Updike's vision is as flinty after
Rabbit's death as it was during life. For a total change of pace, I then went on
to Song of the Dodo by David Quammen. Yes, this is the same man who wrote
the brief biography of Darwin that I read in September. This much longer book
represents a detailed but popular and accessible analysis of island
biodiversity, population genetics and plain old-fashioned adventure nature
writing. It's not the easiest book to read (partly because it's so sweeping).
But it is inspiring.
December 2006 There's no better
way to get into the spirit of the holiday season than to start with David Rakoff.
His finely tuned sense of humor and comfortable prose are the perfect antidote
to the treacle that comes our way in preparation for the winter holidays. Go
read Don't Get Too Comfortable. I need say no more! A book that somehow
escaped my attention when it first came out, Borrowed Time by Paul
Monette, holds up despite the years of the AIDS epidemic. In fact, it reads like
history and is the more chilling for it. It is impossible to read this book
without thinking that the author who chronicles the death of his lover from AIDS
would be dead in a few years, himself. To finish out the year, I read The God
Delusion by Dawkins. This is a "muscular" book on atheism that
pulls no punches. A good read!
January 2007 Another year!
This year's One City, One Book silliness in Philadelphia reflects on a book by
Carlos N. Eire Dreaming of Snow in Havana. This title is a bit ridiculous
since there is little sense of the wistfulness for northern climates. But there
is an odd childhood memoir locked into a screed against Castro (so far so good)
but also against lots of other things. The grace of letting go would be a nice
addition to this recollection of vignettes from 40 years earlier. In fairness,
the author doesn't cramps from self congratulation, but he is so opinionated,
it's hard to say what satisfies him. I almost left out the Richard Ford book, Independence
Day. Don't ask why I started this trilogy in the middle, but this is Ford's
version of the Rabbit series -- updated and extremely well written. Unlike the
Updike books that unveil events over a period of months (separated by a decade
each), the Ford books confine themselves to a memorable long weekend. It is a
good instrument for "taking the temperature" of a time and place.
February 2007 The natural
follow-up to Independence Day is The Sportswriter. The first in the (now)
trilogy by Richard Ford, it's quite a different book written in a different
voice. Like the Updike Rabbit books, it follows characters over time, but as the
author changes. The Sportswriter was a bit less confident and a bit less well
written the ID, but still a pleasure. I like the idea of reading them in this
sequence although I'm sure I am in the minority there.
March 2007 The book, Talk,
Talk by TC Boyle had gotten good reviews. I found it incredibly hard to read
since it touched up very sensitive issues related to identity theft and
"personhood". It's weird that that topic would be more personal that
abuse, murder, etc. but I think we are all at risk constantly from identity
theft, and there's no telling how deep one will be pulled into it.
April 2007 For reasons that elude
me now, I decided to read Faggots by Larry Kramer (again). I read this
book when it came out in the late 1970s and I confess that I forgot everything
about it. While I can't say that it was enjoyable or even comfortable, it is a
true cri de coeur!
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