Richard LeComte's life at the keyboard

Reviews: John Dies at the End and The Indian Clerk

2012-01-26T10:56:00.000-08:00

Today, I'm finishing up the 2011-12 Chunkster Challenge. I had signed up to read six books of 450 pages or more. I already posted reviews for Angelology, A Discovery of Witches, The Art of Fielding and Sunnyside. Now I'm finishing (we had until January 2012) with two novels I read in 2011: John Dies at the End (480 pages) and The Indian Clerk (496 pages).

John Dies at the End: This novel is really too long for satire, but David Wong (a pseudonym) has a great many exciting and humorous passages laced into the narrative, which began as an online serial novel. David (the narrator) and his friend, John, discover a drug portal into an alternative universe that continually messes with their brains, their lives and civilization as we know it. The two uncover a conspiracy on the part of an alternate universe for an occult-like artificial bio-intelligence to invade and take over our world. Meanwhile, they discover bad things at an abandoned mall, and David undergoes at least a couple of freaky transformations. One character even doesn't really exist. I'm looking forward to whatever sequel the author manages to put together, because I'm fully interested in how this story moves into the future.

The Indian Clerk: David Leavitt's emotionally engaging and intellectually stimulating historical novel investigates the life of G.H. Hardy, a willful, brilliant and reclusive Oxford mathematician, as he comes into contact with and eventually befriends (more or less) a self-taught Indian genius named Srinivasa Ramanujan. Leavitt goes into fine detail about the lives of Oxford dons, the outbreak of World War I and its effects on pacifist radicals, and the crushingly foreignness of England for the clerk. Because Leavitt chooses to focus on Hardy rather than Ramanujan, the latter remains something of a mystery. But Hardy, who is seen both at the time of Ramanujan's stay and Oxford and several years later during a lecture at Harvard) is a very strong character, and we get glimpses of well-known historical figures, including D.H. Lawrence (hilariously homophobic), Bertrand Russell (a self-promoting pacifist) and librarian-diety S.R. Ranganathan. In fact, Leavitt's depiction of the milieu of Britain right before and during World War I, encompassing such issues as women's rights and gay rights, may be the best part of the novel -- more comprehensible for me than the discussion of the behavior of primes. (Although I know what primes are, thank you.) Leavitt remains one of my favorite authors, both for his prose style and the fact he's my age.

WWW Wednesday: Jan. 18

2012-01-18T13:59:00.000-08:00

For the WWW meme as well as reviews for challenges:

What I've read:

"Snuff" by Terry Pratchett: Pratchett is nearly at the top of his game in this Discworld potboiler starring the eternally conflicted copper Sam Vimes. He, Lady Sybil and young Sam head for a country holiday at Lady Sybil's estate. But Sam can't quite stay on holiday, and he soon uncovers smuggling, slavery and murder. The novel adds goblins to the list of humanoid Discworldians becoming assimilated into Ankh-Morpork culture. The novel isn't as intricate and delightful as Thud (and the plot takes some time to get going), but it has more moments than two of Pratchett's later works, Unseen Academicals and Making Money. Plus, there's an exciting scene on a raging river as Vimes attempts to save a boat full of goblins and subdue a sociopath. As always, I just enjoy Pratchett's wit, his wry asides and the looniness of Discworld, with its preindustrial mix of mechanics and magic, even if the more recent plots have a kind of sameness about them -- particularly the last three. It's a comforting, familiar place where I enjoy spending time.
Challenges: British author challenge, 52 books in 52 weeks.

"Super Sad True Love Story" by Gary Shteyngart. I had tried to read this novel in 2010 and 2011, but I kept getting distracted (despite its relatively brevity). So this month, I found I could download it onto my MP3 player from my library, so I listened to it after "Snuff." Listening to it is fully rewarding. Tt's read by a pair of actors -- one male, one female -- who do a terrific job of impersonating the first-person narrators, Lenny Abramov and Eunice Park. The novel combines elements of 1984-style dystopian literature and metafiction, but ultimately it comes down to a he-said, she-said relationship between a 39-year-old salesman and a 24-year-old directionless student at the end of the United States. Shteyngart's USA is coming apart at the seams, and it's all happening in New York. Corporations have taken over most nation-states, and the USA is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Lenny, the hapless half of the narration, bemoans the loss of text and history and frets continuously about his Russian-Jewish immigrant parents in Westbury. Eunice is torn between her self-loathing (an outgrowth from abuse by her immigrant father) and her growing love for the smitten, devoted Lenny. The result is a see-saw. Both get caught up in the American endtimes. Lenny is clawing desperately for a physical immortality at a giant corporation's Post-Human Services (I dislike what he says about Judaism and Christianity, but I understand the feelings). This novel is super-sad, and also frightening, because what happens in this novel easily could wind up true.

Challenges: 52 books in 52 weeks.

"The Flame Alphabet" by Ben Marcus: I think Marcus has listened to too many short stories written by MFA students at Columbia. I really tried to give this novel the benefit of the doubt, but the novel is wearying and completely free of resonance. A couple outside Rochester who practice a very particular brand of Judaism (they listen to a rabbi broadcasting through an orange cable accessed through a hole in a hut) come down, like the rest of the humanity, with an acute allergy to their child's language. Their child, Esther, is particularly unpleasant, bending her father's attempt at simple communication into attacks she must parry. (I thank God I can talk reasonably with my children some of the time.) Anyway, things go downhill rapidly, and the couple end up separated; the father, the narrator of the piece, finds himself experimenting with written language in a lab where all forms of speech are forbidden and deadly. So we have a nearly-300 page novel written in the first person about the breakdown of speech. Sure, speech can be deadly, but it also can be beautiful, and I don't get the sense the characters communicated very well to begin with -- so why do they miss communication so much? And Marcus's prose, while technically proficient (fine descriptions, strong narrative voice), makes you long for silence. It doesn't make you appreciate language all the more. It does, however, make you want to go write something, or talk to someone.

Challenges: To Be Read challenge.

What I'm reading now: I'm splitting my time among The Barbarian Nurseries by Hector Tobar, A Partial History of Lost Causes by Jennifer DuBois and The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters Vol. 1 by Gordon Dahlquist.

What I plan to read next: I want to finish The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst and The Year's Best Science Fiction 2011, both of which are Chunkster Challenge books.

Teaser Tuesday: Jan. 17

2012-01-17T11:28:00.000-08:00

For the Teaser Tuesday Web meme:

From "The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters, Vol. 1" by Gordon Dahlquist: p. 334:

The voices were still some distance away, perhaps across the room, he could not tell. He reached out and tentatively exerted pressure on the grated covering.

Top 10 Tuesday: Top 10 Books for People Who Don't Read SF and Fantasy

2012-01-17T10:53:00.000-08:00

Top 10 SF andfantasy books for people who do not read SF and fantasy; for the Top 10 Tuesday Webmeme.

For this list, Idecided to list 10 books by 10 different authors, but other books by these authorsalso would fill the bill; I’ll put them in the descriptions. The thing is, I don't read a lot of SF and fantasy; I pick and choose. These authors are among those I've chosen:

1. Declareby Tim Powers. Powers writes gender-bending “secret history” books thatcombine fantasy and actual events and people. Here, we discover that the SovietUnion and the Cold War were the work of a mad djinn. I’d also recommend his Las Vegas fantasy Last Call.

2. ACanticle for Liebowitz by Walter M. Miller. This beautifully written linkedseries of novellas tells of a monastery formed after a nuclear holocaust; itlooks at how human society reinvents itself according to the offices of a RomanCatholic religious order, and how the reinvention succeeds and fails.

3. TheIllearth War by Stephen R. Donaldson. A friend, hearing my complaint aboutthe poor prose style of fantasy writers in the 1970s, recommended the firstThomas Covenant trilogy to me. This, the second volume, is the best, althoughyou probably should start with Lord Foul’s Bane. The basic premise is that ThomasCovenant, who suffers from leprosy, is transported to a fantasy realm where heis healed; the great thing about his character is that he never believes it’sreal, creating innate existential conflict throughout the novels. In IllearthWar, Covenant is joined by a blind expert in military tactics to fight againsta rising evil force.

4. TheMagicians by Lev Grossman. Harry Potter for young adults reared inBrooklyn; by turns scary, funny, profound, obscene and riveting. This novel,and the sequel The Magician King, are for people who like fantasy with dirtyfingernails.

5. TheChinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont. Malmont weaves actual pulp andSF writers into this novel about a mysterious substance the U.S. military mayhave hidden in the 1930s. The novel also incorporates magic, as in Carter Beatsthe Devil by Glen David Gold. H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Heinlein and L. RonHubbard are key to the plot, as are the two main characters – the authors ofThe Shadow and the Doc Savage book series.

6. Leviathanby Scott Westerfeld. This is a YA title more or less in the steampunkgenre, but it’s much more – World War I recast as a battle between theDarwinists (who have spliced the genes of many animals to create pollution-freetransport as well as fearsome living weapons) and the Klankers (Germans andAustrians wielding giant mechanical armaments). At the heart of the story is agirl pretending to be a boy so she can act as a crew on a giant, livingdirigible called Leviathan. Westerfeld’s two follow-up novels, Behemoth andGoliath, are great, too.

7. Agentto the Stars by John Scalzi. This funny satire portrays a Hollywood agenttasked with introducing a thoroughly disgusting yet perfectly harmlessintelligent race of aliens to the American public. It’s SF for people who likeHollywood novels.

8. TheRestaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams. This second Hitchhiker’sGuide book is by far the funniest; it’s a terrific send-up of SF while being agreat SF novel. You may have to read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxyfirst, however, to appreciate Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect and Zaphod Beeblebrox.

9. ThePrestige by Christopher Priest. This novel is part steampunk, part horrorand part SF; but whenever Nicolas Tesla appears, you know you’re in for a greattime. Two competing magicians hide tremendous secrets that play out over nearlya century. The novel has a lot more to it than the movie, although the movie inof itself is quite good.

10. Dawn by Octavia E. Butler. Thebeginning of the Exogenesis series tells of a woman waking up many years aftera nuclear holocaust to discover she’s the guinea pig for a race of symbioticextraterrestrials who are reshaping the human race. The first two books,including Adulthood Rites, are quite good; by the third, however, her conceithas pretty much run its course. But this novel has a full, believable maincharacter, and it poses a great many questions about what it means to be humanwhen humans are bent on destroying each other.

Waiting on Wednesday: Jan. 11

2012-01-12T11:19:00.000-08:00

For the Waiting on Wednesday blog meme:

We Only Know So Much by Elizabeth Crane (due from Harper in 2012): Crane is an exquisite stylist. She crafts sentences that curve around themselves like an avatar looking for treasure in Zork. I've read her short-story collections When the Messenger is Hot and You Must Be This Happy to Enter (the latter among the top 10 great book titles I posted last year). I've been waiting for a book from her for a long time, and now I learn that she's coming to the plate in June.

Top 10 Tuesday: Authors I wish would write another book

2012-01-10T14:45:00.000-08:00

For the Top 10 Tuesday Web meme:

Top 10 authors I wish would write another book (evidently, being dead does not disqualify one from the list, but I'm confining mine to living writers). I used to be quite irritated about the productivity of my favorite writers versus my mother's favorites. Danielle Steel always seems to be putting out another book, but Jonathan Franzen takes eight or nine years. Where's the justice in that? Only John Updike seemed to match Steel's lockstep march to the printers. Also, several of these authors have written books I have yet to read; so in theory, if I want to read another book by them, I should just go to Amazon, my bookcase or the library. Also, presumably Lev Grossman is going to finish "The Magicians" trilogy, and Matthew Hughes is going to write more Archonate books, so I'm covered there. Michael Chabon, Tim Powers, Mark Leyner, Steve Erickson and Marisha Pessl have novels due out in 2012 or 2013, so I left them off the list. Also, Douglas Coupland has a book about Marshall McLuhan coming out, but no sightings of fiction.

Here we go:

1. Susan Howatch: Howatch wrote six interlocking novels about Church of England clergymen during the 1930s through the 1960s. Often called the Starbridge series, these spellbinding novels combined vivid characterization, exciting and intricate plots, and a heavy, welcome dose of Christian spirituality. She then took a few of the characters from those books, brought them into the 1980s and produced the St. Benet's trilogy about a healing ministry in London and its entanglement with all sorts of sordid stuff. Although the last of those novels, The Heartbreaker, seemed to promise a follow-up that would resolve some of the conflicts left lingering from the fifth Starbridge novel, Mystical Paths, she has not produced said follow-up. She seems to have retired. That's too bad. I respect her decision, but I would like it if she wrote another novel in the series. If not, I would read whatever she wrote next.

2. Jonathan Franzen: It must take him a long time to write those long novels about contemporary life; in the meantime, he writes a lot of autobiographical essays and articles about the post office. I've been a "fan" since The Twenty-Seventh City, and I will continue to hope for whatever he writes next. He does have an essay collection coming out this year, however.

3. Mark Helprin: I went to hear him speak at Wesleyan in 1981 or 1982. I was so impressed with the pinstripe suit he wore that I bought one for myself. Winter's Tale is among a lot of people's top 10 contemporary novels; it combines magic realism with a decidedly libertarian attitude. His subsequent novels engage the reader in many aspects of warfare and satirize modern life -- A Soldier of the Great War (World War I), Memoir in Antproof Case (World War II) and Freddy and Fredericka (Prince Charles and Princess Diana get sent to the United States on a quest). He wrote a diatribe about digital copyright infringement and often writes essays of a decidedly conservative bent, but I hope he's working on more fiction.

4. Glen David Gold: I read Sunnyside, his second novel, in 2011; I wish I had waited, because I could have included it in the World War I challenge. But his first novel, Carter Beats the Devil, delves into magic, the invention of television and the "secret history" genre with skill and suspense. On his blog, he says he's finishing another book, so we can only hope.

5. Austin Grossman: My daughter listened to Soon I Will Be Invincible, a fascinating superhero novel that incorporates elements of Narnia as well. It's one of her favorite novels, and it was one of the top novels I read in the last decade. Again on his blog, he's promised to publish more novels (at the time he wrote Invincible, he was getting a doctorate in literature), so we shall wait and see.

6. David Leavitt: He has been publishing novels about every 3 or 4 years, usually in the same year Tom Perrotta publishes one. For example, in 2008 Leavittpublished The Indian Clerk the same year Perrotta published The Abstinence Teacher. In 2000, they published novels that took place at the same time at Yale -- Martin Bauman, or the Sure Thing (Leavitt) and Joe College (Perrotta). Last year, however, Perrotta published The Leftovers, but Leavitt didn't seem to publish a novel. I hope he comes out with a new one.

7. Rattawut Lapcharoensap: I read his short-story collection Sightseeing, about life in Thailand, several years ago. The stories were so good that I've been waiting for a follow-up collection or a novel. I haven't seen either. For that matter, I'm also waiting for Paul Yoon's follow-up to his story collection, which is set in South Korea.

8. Kaylie Jones: Two of her novels were among my favorites of the previous decade -- Celeste Ascending and Speak Now. Recently, she wrote a memoir about her mother, which I intend to read. But I'm wondering if she's going to write another novel.

9. Whit Stillman: He's written only one novel, and it was based on his movie The Last Days of Disco. But I thought the novel was witty and fun, and I liked it better than the movie. Stillman is the chronicler of WASPs -- his movies Metropolitan and Barcelona are lots of fun. He has a new movie out, Damsels in Distress, which is making the rounds of festivals. But how about trying to write another novel? I'm sure it would be good.

10. Elizabeth McCracken: She's know more for The Giant's House and her memoir about losing a baby than for her second novel, Niagra Falls All Over Again. But Falls is a showbiz novel (focusing on a vaudeville team), and I love showbiz novels. But whatever she's working on next, I'm sure I'll enjoy.

Top 10 Tuesday: Jan. 3

2012-01-04T11:30:00.000-08:00

Top 10 books I'm looking forward to in 2012 for the Top 10 Tuesday meme. This list is assisted greatly by the publication of The Millions preview list. I expanded on some of the titles in a previous blog post.

1. The Sugar-Coated Nutsack by Mark Leyner (his first fiction in 14 years).

2. Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon (a mere hint of a novel coming out in the fall about families in Berkeley).

3. Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (follow-up to Wolf Hall).

4. Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness (follow-up to the uneven but enjoyable A Discovery of Witches).

5. The Rook by Daniel O'Malley (first-time author, but it promises to be a literary thriller-puzzle).

6. Hide Me Among the Graves by Tim Powers (A new novel by the author of the extravagant, spiritually complex SF novels Three Days to Never, Declare and Last Call).

7. The Vanishers by Heidi Julavits (seems to combine serious fiction and urban fantasy; I liked her previous novel, The Uses of Enchantment).

8. The Fault in our Stars by John Green (a YA author who transcends the category; his previous Paper Towns was a great deal of fun and a more mature work than the hit Looking for Alaska).

9. What in God's Name by Simon Rich (promises to say some things about God that I won't like, but I'm a fan of his short humor fiction, and I read Elliott Alagash).

10. Partial History of Lost Causes by Jennifer Dubois (I already have this one through Amazon Vine; another literary puzzle novel, this time about a letter that links two disparate people on opposite sides of the word).

Comment: The Millions' List of Upcoming Books

2012-01-03T10:32:00.000-08:00

I've vowed to get through a pile of books I already own, but several of the titles from this post by The Millions have me salivating (metaphorically, of course). Thanks to the editors for putting this list together, it's much more difficult than putting together a list of upcoming movies, because editors have to scan dozens of publishers; lists.

Sadly, I really shouldn't read several of these before I've read the novels I do own by these authors (the big one being The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon, which has been on my TBR list for a couple of years).

By far the most exciting is Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon. I'm a big fan of his novels, ever since he put a character named "LeComte" in The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. The novel, according to The Millions' editor, is going to be a family chronicle that crosses the Berkeley-Oakland line. I love Berkeley and Oakland, having hung out there (alone and with my kids) several times while we were living in Reno. It's one of those places you can imagine yourself living in if you had the income. Well, we read to live other peoples' lives, if only for a few hundred pages, so I'm looking forward to this publication.

Here are some of the others I'm looking forward to:

The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus: I'm reading this now through the Amazon Vine program. It's been somewhat difficult to get through the first few pages, because Marcus throws a lot of made-up terminology at you pell-mell to set up the premise: Parents flee when their teenage children's voices become toxic to them.

The Patrick Melrose Novels: I had read a couple of years ago about Edward St. Aubyn (often compared to Anthony Powell), and now a collection of his novels is coming out. I have signed up for a British author reading challenge, so I may indulge in this one (maybe in 2013, because I really should read the volumes of Anthony Powell novels I own first).

No One is Here Except All of Us by Ramona Ausubel: It sounds like a combination of metafiction and Eastern European literature, much like The Tiger's Wife, which I enjoyed listening to recently.

Gods Without Men by Hari Kunzru -- I really should read the novel I own by him (Transmission) before I get this title.Nevertheless, this novel sounds like the kind of mind-bending, eras-straddling, sweeping-plot story I gravitate toward.

The Sugar-Frosted Nutsack by Mark Leyner -- His obsessively self-centered novels The Tetherballs of Bouganville and Et Tu, Babe are delightful, so we shall see how he does after a 14-year fiction hiatus. Does anybody remember when he was on Letterman? I've already ordered it.

The Vanishers by Heidi Julavits: This one promises more magical stuff than The Uses of Enchantment, her penchant novel about the ambiguities surrounding the disappearance of a teenage girl and how her choices affect her years later. Missing people seem to play into this novel as well.

Office Girl by Joe Meno: The metafiction-laden The Boy Detective Fails haunts me to this day, but I have not yet read The Great Perhaps, so perhaps I should read The Great Perhaps before, perhaps, buying Office Girl. Incidentally, The Boy Detective Fails was made into a musical that got a not-very-good review in The New York Times.

Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel: I would be more excited about this book had I finished Wolf Hall, but I've pretty much committed to reading the novel about Thomas Cromwell this year as part of the British Author and To Be Read challenges.

Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures by Emma Straub: I don't know this author, but I love Hollywood novels, so I'll give this novel about an actress breaking into the studio system in the 1940s a try.

I placed several more titles on my Shelfari to be read shelf, but these are the ones I'm most looking forward to. The others are Canada by Richard Ford, Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter, Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel (not a new book, but it looked interesting) and a compilation of writings by critic and television commentator John Leonard.

Teaser Tuesday -- Jan. 3

2012-01-03T09:16:00.000-08:00

For the Teaser Tuesday Web meme:

From "The Flame Alphabet" by Ben Marcus, p. 45:

"When the service began, Burke held forth on the opportunity called blame. In blame is a chance to step into responsibility, to make of our bodies absorbent parcels for the accusations of others."

2012 Reading Challenges

2012-01-02T14:59:00.000-08:00

Once again, I'm signing up for some reading challenges. In 2011, I broke my record for books read (64) and completed the Chunkster Challenge (six books with more than 450 pages). But I pretty much fell down on most of the others. So here are the ones I plan to try this year:

1. Chunkster Challenge: Once again, I'm going for the Plump Primer -- six books of more than 450 pages each.

2. 2012 To Be Read challenge: This one is a little more forgiving than the one I signed up for last year (I read only four of the 12 books I was planning on reading). So here I'm signing up for the 21-30 level (a sweet kiss). Here is a partial list of th books I now own that I plan to read this year:

The Barbarian Nurseries
The Stranger's Child
Freedom
Wolf Hall
The Yiddish Policeman 's Union
The Flame Alphabet
Taft 2012
A Partial History of Lost Causes
All Other Nights
Backward Ran Sentences (Wolcott Gibbs compilation)
Europe Central
Living, Loving, Partygoing
The Complete Novels of Flann O'Brien
Several books for the British, European, Eastern European and Southern challenges.

3. Mount TBR Reading challenge: A little less demanding than even No. 2 on this list; I'll commit to reading 20 books currently on my shelves.

4. European Reading Challenge: I always read a lot of books set in Europe, so I will sign up to read five (five-star) books that qualify from different authors in European settings.

5. Short Story Challenge -- I'll sign up for "Tell Me a Story," which is one to three short-story collections.

6: World War I Challenge: I'll "dip" here -- I'll read one to three books with a World War I theme. (It's too bad I didn't do this one in 2011, as I read The Indian Clerk, Sunnyside and Regeneration, all with WWI themes.)

7. 52 Books in 52 Weeks: As I read 64 books in 2011, I should be able to do this one.

8 Eastern European Reading Challenge: I like Eastern European books as a subset of European books, so I'll commit to reading four titles.

9. British Author Reading Challenge: This may be difficult, as it requires reading 12 titles by British authors, but I know there will be some overlap with other challenges. Here are the titles I plan to read:

Living, Loving, Party-Going by Henry Green
Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantell
The Stranger's Child by Allen Hollinghurst
The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam
Good to be God by Tibor Fischer
Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope
Descent into Hell by Charles Williams
Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
PSmith in the City by P.G. Wodehouse
Snuff by Terry Pratchett
The Impossible Dead by Ian Rankin
Kingdom Come by J.G. Ballard

10. Southern reading challenge: I live in the South, so I suppose I should read more books set in the South. I'll do Level Four -- four books from my TBR stack.

OK, that should suffice.

End of the Year Book Survey for 2011

2011-12-31T23:43:00.000-08:00

End of the Year Book Survey for 2011 -- From the Perpetual Page-Turner Blog

1. Best Book You Read In 2011? The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta -- a deeply moving examination of love and loss set against impossible but understandable circumstances.

2. Most Disappointing Book/Book You Wish You Loved More Than You Did? -- Zone One by Colson Whitehead -- I was expecting a novel transcending or redefining the zombie novel, but instead we get a well-written but unprovocative riff on Dawn of the Dead -- lower Manhattan as the mall.

3. 3. Most surprising (in a good way) book of 2011? The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides -- I was afraid this novel was going to be a retread of '80s college novels like The Rules of Attraction; instead, it was a mature look at coming to grips with one's abilities and limits.

4. Book you recommended to people most in 2011? The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach, because it's a guy novel, and guys need to read more.

5. Best series you discovered in 2011? The Magicians and The Magician King by Lev Grossman. The Magicians had been on my to be read list, and when The Magician King came out, I decided to read them both within a short span of time. It's Narnia with adult problems, and it takes the whole magic riff to a challenging, thoroughly uncomfortable and fulfilling level.

6. Favorite new authors you discovered in 2011? Chad Harbach (Art of Fielding), Kevin Wilson (The Family Fang), Erin Morgenstern (Night Circus), Deborah Harkness (A Discovery of Witches), Charles Yu (How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe)

7. Best book that was out of your comfort zone or was a new genre for you? 666 Park Avenue by Gabriella Pierce -- kind of supernatural chick lit grounded in urban fantasy.

8. Most thrilling, unputdownable book in 2011? Ready Player One by Ernest Cline -- It's poor boy vs. giant corporations in cyberspace, but the story really moved as the main character solved the riddles of the OASIS founder's game.

9. Book you most anticipated in 2011? -- Goliath by Scott Westerfeld, but since I couldn't get a copy of the audiobook (Alan Cumming does a great job of reading this series), I'll get to it in 2012.

10. Favorite cover of a book you read in 2011? The reprint of The Late, Great Creature by Brock Brower.

11. Most memorable character in 2011? A tossup between Mike Schwartz, the constantly ailing captain and catcher for the college baseball team in The Art of Fielding, and Mitchell Grammaticus, the religious seeker in The Marriage Plot.

12. Most beautifully written book read in 2011? That would have to be In Cold Blood, which I read for the first time. You can see why Capote came apart after writing that epic.

13. Book that had the greatest impact on you in 2011? Wendy and the Lost Boys by Julie Salamon. The book made me nostalgic for New York theater in the 1980s, and it brought a beloved theatrical figure and her milieu to life.

14. Book you can't believe you waited until 2011 to finally read? Newsreel by Irvin Faust. I bought it in 1980 and took 31 years to read it. And it turned out to be an exciting character study of a man haunted by his World War II experiences.

15. Favorite Passage/Quote From A Book You Read In 2011? I don't have the book in front of me, but it would be the Antarctic sequence in The Magicians, wherein the main characters discover a great deal about themselves after being transformed into geese and flying to Antarctica for rigorous magical training.

16. Book That You Read In 2011 That Would Be Most Likely To Reread In 2012? Regeneration by Pat Barker, because I intend to read the other two in her World War I sequence, and I may need to refresh my memory.

Future stuff:

1. One Book You Didn't Get To In 2011 But Will Be Your Number 1 Priority in 2012? Other than aforementioned Goliath, I'd have to say Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, which I've been procrastinating on since 2010.

2. Book You Are Most Anticipating For 2012? That would be The Sugar-Coated Nutsack, a return to fiction for Mark Leyner.

3. One Thing You Hope To Accomplish Or Do In Your Reading/Blogging In 2012? Read 70 books (I read 64 in 2010, a record).

Top 10 Tuesday: Dec. 27 (Top 10 books of the year)

2011-12-21T10:31:00.000-08:00

For Top 10 Tuesday: Here are the top 10 books that I read in 2011, in no particular order. Books published in 2011 are asterisked.

1. The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta*

2. The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach*

3. The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides*

4. The Magicians and The Magician King by Lev Grossman*

5. Sunnyside by Glen David Gold

6. The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips*

7. Swamplandia! by Karen Russell*

8. Wendy and the Lost Boys by Julie Salamon*

9. Newsreel by Irvin Faust

10. The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht *

Next 10:

1. The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt

2. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern*

3. The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson*

4. Mr. Toppit by Charles Elton

5. The Astounding, the Amazing and the Unknown by Paul Malmont *

6. The Nobodies Album by Carolyn Parkhurst

7. Our Tragic Universe by Scarlett Thomas

8. A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness*

9. How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu

10. Wicked Pavilion by Dawn Powell

Waiting on Wednesday: Dec. 21

2011-12-21T10:03:00.001-08:00

For the Waiting on Wednesday blog meme:

"Canada" by Richard Ford -- this new novel, scheduled for May, apparently involves the story of a Montana boy sent to live with relatives in Saskatchewan. Certainly good news for fans of Ford. And Canada. The Amazon site has no plot details.

What I'm Reading Wednesday: Dec. 14

2011-12-14T17:37:00.001-08:00

For the WWW Web meme:

Finished reading: The Other by Matthew Hughes: Hughes' elegant, somewhat horrific journeys into the far, far future of the universe sets off apparently on a new trilogy with The Other, which focuses on a rotund purveyor of stolen artifacts named Luff Imbry. Imbry is shanghaied to a distant planet where nearly everyone looks about the same and those who don't end up as outcasts -- including Imbry. Hughes' style is satiric, and the epicurean obsessions of the main character prove an impediment to surviving in this hostile, desert world. Many mysteries remain at the end, suggesting the author has more of this character to come.

The Late Great Creature by Brock Bower: Bower's 1972 novel recently was declared a neglected book and brought back to life through a reprint. This satirical, often raunchy novel focuses on Simon Moro, a Lugosi-like actor who specialized in playing monsters in horror films in the 1920s and '30s. His wild personal life intertwines as he first tries to make a comeback in a grade-Z horror film, then precedes to sabotage said comeback in a series of increasingly risky and disgusting antics in New York in 1968. His tale is told first by a magazine writer, then his awful director, and finally Moro himself, as the secrets of his past come back to haunt the ever-more-horrific present. A very good Hollywood novel.

Lucky Break by Esther Freud: This charming novel follows three actors from a Method-laden British acting school through a series of successes and failures that illustrate the up-and-down nature of show business. Charlie, the beautiful, coveted actress; Dan, the handsome actor who starts a family way, way early; and Nell, the character actress whose struggles form the core of the novel. In a series of overlapping chapters that alternately focus on each of the three actors, Freud shows how British actors cope with stress, survive the grueling audition process and finally face the call of Hollywood.

Ready Player One: The fascinating plot overcomes some less-than-stellar prose. In a dystopian future when the energy's run out and the Great Recession is in its third decade, a high school boy strives to find the keys to the fortune of the founder of the OASIS, an online virtual reality MUD with hundreds of planets. He must battle his friends, the woman he loves and an evil corporation to sort out the clues left by the OASIS founder, a recluse steeped in the pop and computer culture of the 1980s. If you lived in the '80s, played Zork and video games and listened to the music of that decade, this novel will bring at least some of it back.

What I'm reading now: I'm dividing my time between finishing the novel The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris and the biography Wendy and the Lost Boys (about the playwright Wendy Wasserstein) by Julie Salamon. I'm also listening to The Tiger's Wife on my MP3 player.

What I plan to read next: I have two library books I might try to finish -- Super Sad True Love Story and the National Book Award-winning Salvage the Bones, as well as the Amazon Vine copy of Domestic Violets, or I may read The Barbarian Nurseries or The Stranger's Child to finish off the Chunkster Challenge (I think I already have six chunksters this year, however).

Waiting on Wednesday: Dec. 7

2011-12-07T09:43:00.001-08:00

For the Waiting on Wednesday blog meme:

This just in from Lev Grossman: The best news of 2012 is that Mark Leyner is returning to fiction. His novels in the 1990s were brilliantly written paeans to celebrity narcissism -- "Et Tu, Babe," in which Leyner and his spouse get high on Lincoln's bottled morning breath; and "The Tetherballs of Bougainville," in which Leyner's father enters New Jersey's random execution program. Grossman reports that in March, Leyner returns with his first novel since 1998; it's titled "The Sugar-Frosted Nutsack," and Amazon claims it's about ancient gods who go after a New Jersey butcher. Count me in.

Top 10 Tuesday for Dec. 6: Childhood favorites

2011-12-06T09:58:00.001-08:00

Top 10 Childhood Faves, for the Top 10 Tuesday blog meme:

1. "Stuart Little" -- The ending has always haunted me; Stuart goes off on his quest for the unreachable ideal, just as the Baudelaire orphans go off into the Great Unknown in A Series of Unfortunate Events. I love the New York atmosphere as well.

2. Tom Swift: Nearly forgotten, these stories introduced me to science fiction of a very basic level. They didn't age well when compared to the Hardy Boys, mainly because the technology was old even by the time I was reading them. But what adventures!

3. Noddy books -- This British series about a toy who lives in Toyland and gets into trouble with the crooked denizens thereof enchanted me in third grade. I read quite a few; they were available as paperbacks through Scholastic or another program. But they seem no longer published in the United States even after cartoons featuring Noddy showed up on PBS.

4. "A Wrinkle in Time": I read this one in seventh grade, and I closely identified with the misfit Meg as she traveled the universe with the trio of witches.

5. "Tomorrow's Children": This collection of 18 short stories edited by Isaac Asimov was a Scholastic offering in the 1970s. I loved these stories, particularly the one about the People, a settlement of extraterrestrials who try to conceal their powers.

6. "The Sneetches and Other Stories": Dr. Seuss, in a darker mood, tells stories about envious beach creatures putting stars upon thars and mysterious pants with nobody inside them. I read and re-read this book many times.

7. Encyclopedia Brown: These solve-it-yourself mini-mysteries were nearly impossible to check out of the school library because of the demand. Lots of kids enjoyed them, particularly the DIY aspect.

8. Danny Dunn series: Yet more SF juvenile fiction; these, too, were in hot demand at the school library. I remember little of them except for the name of the protagonist, but I remember enjoying them a lot.

9. Robert Benchley essays: The amazing thing is that I got many of the jokes in these essays, written in the 1920s and '30s. Lots of laughs, even for a fifth-grader.

10. Henry and the Paper Route by Beverly Cleary: Henry Huggins was a guy you could admire -- he was older than I was, and he seemed to live in a much more open environment (West Coast as opposed to Long Island), but the story was so clear and empathetic, you couldn't help liking him.

Teaser Tuesdays: Nov. 29

2011-11-29T11:39:00.001-08:00

For the Teaser Tuesday blog meme:

From "Lucky Break" by Esther Freud, page 301:

"'Don't worry about me,' Charlie told them. 'I'll do my own make-up, and right now nothing makes much difference to my hair.'"

Top 10 Tuesday for Nov. 29: TBR list for the winter

2011-11-29T10:14:00.001-08:00

For the Top 10 Tuesday Web meme:

Unfortunately, the TBR list for the winter looks a lot like the TBR list for 2011. I have knocked a few titles off the 2011 list, particularly "Sunnyside" by Glen David Gold, "The Indian Clerk" by David Leavitt and "Newsreel" by Irvin Faust. So here are the titles I intend to finish between now and March 21:

1. "Lucky Break" by Esther Freud. I'm reading it now -- it's a fun novel about a group of Gen X acting students in Great Britain.

2. "Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline: I also have started reading this title, about a guy hunting for '80s-themed Easter eggs in a future MUD.

3. "Goliath" by Scott Westerfeld. I keep hoping the Tuscaloosa Public Library buys the audiobook, because Alan Cumming does such a great job; failing that, I'll read it over Christmas break.

4. "Snuff" by Terry Pratchett. Light reading for Hogswatch.

5. "Freedom" by Jonathan Franzen. Yes, finally, I'll pull the trigger on it.

6. "Wendy and the Lost Boys" by Julie Salomon. I'm looking forward to reading this biography of Wendy Wasserstein, whom I once met.

7. "The Stranger's Child" by Alan Hollinghurst. I've been on a World War I kick lately.

8. "The Yiddish Policeman's Union" by Michael Chabon. Ditto.

9. "The Unnamed" by Joshua Ferris. A book I need to finish for Amazon Vine.

10. "The Barbarian Nurseries" by Hector Tobar. I love novels about L.A.

Of course, I reserve the right to substitute books I receive for Christmas.

What I'm Reading Wednesday: Nov. 16

2011-11-16T15:03:00.001-08:00

For the WWW weekly Web meme:

Finished: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern: This romantic, lightly likable fantasy revolves around a circus created specifically to test the magical abilities of two people -- Celia and Marco -- and the mysterious guardians whose clashing philosophies of magic fuel the rivalry. The novel owes a lot to Christopher Priest's The Prestige, but Morgenstern succeeds in creating an atmosphere you come to care about. The timeline weaves in and out of the 19th and 20th centuries in ways you begin to appreciate as the novel draws to a close. She also creates a great deal of suspense toward the end, as we wonder if a principal character is going to make his rendezvous with the circus. I'd recommend it.

The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt: Leavitt is one of my favorite writers. In this book, a historical novel, he recounts the relationship between the Cambridge mathematician G.H. Hardy and S. Ramanujan, a self-taught math prodigy he summons from India. With the backdrop of World War I, Leavitt weaves a number of characters together, although he always keeps Ramanujan at a distance, concentrating instead on the Anglo characters. You feel you're a step removed from Ramanujan, which I think is Leavitt's intention -- the novel is about not knowing about others different from you, not knowing your own identity (Hardy is gay) and not knowing about God, in contrast to Hardy's quest for proofs (or proof). Very well written, the novel has trouble building narrative drive in the middle, but as Ramanujan's state health grows worse, the novel gets more engaging. Also, the period details and the side glances at other historical figures -- particularly Bertrand Russell and D.H. Lawrence -- are enjoyable.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides: This engaging novel about three people nearly exactly my age; instead of going to Wesleyan, however, the go to Brown. I listened to it over the course of a month on my car stereo, and I found a great deal to relate to -- particularly the campus politics over semiotics and feminism and the feelings of despair of graduating into the worst economy between the 1930s. The novel revolves around three main characters: Madeline (born the same month I was), a beautiful English major; Mitchell, her friend whose long-term crush goes unrequited; and Leonard, a much cooler guy for whom Madeline falls. Leonard is the character supposedly based on David Foster Wallace, but Leonard stands quite distinctly on his own. The novel leaves Brown and heads to Paris, India and a first-rate biological lab in Massachusetts as the characters play out the emotional and spiritual aspects of their lives; they find they frequently come up short, which anybody born in 1960 (the ironic, late boomer, Letterman generation) can understand.

What I'm reading now: The Other, a novel of the Archonate by Matthew Hughes. Hughes is an SF writer, and this novel takes place in the same universe as the Henghis Hapthorn novels. They're quite droll.

What I'll read next: I may start Freedom, finally, or I'll continue reading my birthday books with Lucky Break by Esther Freud.

Teaser Tuesday: Nov. 15

2011-11-15T10:51:00.001-08:00

For the Teaser Tuesday blog meme:

From "The Other" by Matthew Hughes, p. 16

After the hatch had reabsorbed the utensils and dishes, and the punge was steaming in Imbry's cup, the integrator asked if he required diversion.
"I suppose there is no possibility of taking a walk about the ship?" the fat man said.

Teaser Tuesday: Nov. 8

2011-11-08T21:58:00.000-08:00

For the Teaser Tuesday blog meme:

From "The Indian Clerk" by David Leavitt: p. 166:

I looked at her with the compassionate disbelief that one reserves for the insane. And in a sense, I think she was insane at the moment.

What I'm Reading Wednesday -- Nov. 2

2011-11-02T08:46:00.000-07:00

For the WWW weekly Web meme:

What I finished:

John Dies at the End by David Wong: This humorous, occasionally scary and somewhat too long riff on the horror genre was based on a series of Web writings that the author forged into a novel. Sequels are promised. Wong is a pseudonym for Jason Pargin of Cracked.com, and this tale is pretty cracked. David and his friend John get hold of a seriously messed-up drug that wiggles around; the drug turns their brains into hypersensitive computers, allowing them to see into another dimension, which appears to be hell. Along the way they battle the agents of this hell in Vegas and in their unnamed Midwestern hometown, as well as David's own demons. Frequently funny, the novel has a great deal of scatological details I'd just assume skip, but otherwise it's a fun, Halloween-style read.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote: Yes, I'm 50, and I've never read this. So I listened to it in my car. You can see how the book nearly destroyed Capote -- he got much too close to the victims and the perpetrators, detailing their lives before, after and then during the famous murders of the Klutter family near Garden City, Kan. Just as you get to start liking the killers, Capote brings you up short with anecdotes about their past crimes and their rather cold feelings. What you get at the end is a sense of loss as wide and open as Western Kansas.

The Geographer's Library by Jon Fasman: I picked up this book from the remaindered table at Barnes & Noble, and I found it fairly disappointing. A reporter for a weekly paper in western Connecticut comes upon the suspicious death of a resident, who's also a professor at a college in Rhode Island. His investigations lead him into the circle of a group that seems to be reassembling objects stolen from an alchemist's house in Sicily in the 12th century. I normally like historical puzzles surrounding some supernatural object or book, but this one had too many odd, inappropriate details, characters who never came to life and a somewhat confusing setup. Eh.

Digital Information Contexts: Another disappointing book about the possible meanings of information in the digital age. The author brings up hot literary topics -- semiotics, deconstruction, spontaneous order -- but fails to present ways in which these ideas could be applied to information theory or even set up possible research exploring those topics.

What I'm reading now:

The Night Circus: So far, the story is moving very slowly, but it's entertaining -- Erin Morgenstern is in no hurry revealing the plot. Also, the narration keeps jumping back and forth through time, But I'm enjoying it. It's due back Friday, so I need to finish it.

The Marriage Plot: I'm listening to the audiobook. So far, the novel captures what it was like to graduate from a liberal-arts institution in 1982. Bleak. He gets one historical event wrong -- the Beirut barracks bombing was in 1983. Unless I heard the narration wrong.

What I'll read next:

I'm going to choose among "Goliath" by Scott Westerfeld (although I'd like to hold out for the audiobook); City of Promise by Beverly Swerling; or The Museum of Innocence by Orham Pamuk.

Top 10 Tuesday: Books I had strong emotions about

2011-11-01T15:03:00.000-07:00

For the Top 10 Tuesday blog meme.

Top Ten Books I Had very Strong Emotions About (cry, laugh, hurl across the room, etc.):
1. "Going Down" by Jennifer Belle. NYU student becomes call girl -- I can't believe I got through to the end of this. Badly written, miserable protagonist -- I'm still shuddering.
2. "Charlotte's Web" by E.B. White. I can't read the end without weeping. I wept a lot when I read this to my kids several years ago.
3. "The Street Where I Live" by Alan Jay Lerner. I have a great deal of affection for this memoir by the librettist for "My Fair Lady"; I felt like I was a part of Broadway in the 1950s.
4. "Kalki" by Gore Vidal. A mean-spirited, misanthropic little novel with a twist; I thought it was cool when I read it as a teen, but now I hate myself for liking it.
5. "The Last Battle" by C.S. Lewis. Another four-hankie read; the ending is really lovely, especially if you have children and regret, just a little bit, their growing up. But why, Jack, why?
6. "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban": Probably my favorite; the quidditch scene is really exciting, and the plot is deliciously complicated. I remember reading it aloud with a great deal of emotion.
7. "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" by John Berendt: I read this on a beach just a few dozen miles south of Savannah; it made me want to drive up and see it all.
8. "The Gift of Fire" by Richard Mitchell: An inspired ode to teaching and learning by a nearly forgotten author, who also wrote "The Graves of Academe." Well worth finding in a library.
9. "Wit's End: Days and Nights at the Algonquin Round Table" by James R. Gaines: This book about the wits of the Round Table made me wish I were back in New York in the 1920s, and when I used to go to Manhattan I'd always stop by at the hotel, which in the '70s and early '80s still had some of the ambiance.
10. "Absolute Truths" by Susan Howatch: I loved all six Starbridge novels; what made this one the most emotionally complete was the fact it was the last -- I had come to the end of the series, and I regret the end of revelations about these fascinating, flawed clerics.

Teaser Tuesday -- Nov. 1

2011-11-01T14:19:00.000-07:00

For the Teaser Tuesday Web meme:

From "The Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern -- p. 58:

They find they enjoy resolving other people's issues via suggestion more than doing all the work themselves. It is more satisfying, they say.

Teaser Tuesday: Oct. 18

2011-10-18T12:06:00.000-07:00

For the Teaser Tuesday weekly Web meme:

From: The Geographer's Library by Jon Fasman, p. 255:

"After he ceased trying to edify me, Riley devoted the remainder of the flight to prettifying himself: apparently, though academics fly cattle class, they still spend hundreds -- no thousands -- of pounds on fancy suits. And his was a corker: three-piece, naturally, dark green, a perfect silk four-in-hand with a sapphire stickpin and a red handkerchief in his breast pocket."

What I'm Reading Wednesday -- Oct. 12

2011-10-13T07:53:00.000-07:00

For the WWW weekly Web meme:

Finished reading: "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" by Richard Feynman and "I'm Looking Through You" by Jennifer Finney Boylan: I listened to these two memoirs on my car stereo. "Looking" is the more literary of the two; "Joking" is more a collection of reminisces. In "Joking," Feynman, a theoretical physicist who died in 1988, recounts anecdotally his development as a scientist from a boy fixer of radios through MIT, Princeton and the Manhattan Project to his life as a professor at Cornell and Cal Tech. Feynman was the supreme rationalist, concerned mainly with physics, painting (he recounts his career as an amateur artist) and lover of women -- he really liked women. Listening to the book is sometimes difficult, because he goes into some detailed science (at least detailed to me), and it would have helped me understand it more if I could read those passages a few times. But overall, the book is highly enjoyable -- great insights into the scientific process (far different than textbooks tell you), and Feynman's outlook on life is great to peek in on. And he didn't enjoy winning the Nobel -- was he churlish or just not that into accolades?

"Looking" is a follow-up to Boylan's more noted memoir, "She's Not There," which I haven't read yet. Boylan is transgendered and has appeared extensively in the media -- Will Forte even parodied her on "SNL" (something she seems to have enjoyed, and rightfully so). This memoir is very funny and wry, like his novels, and deeply self-deprecating, but also sad -- in part because she's haunted by memories of how she hid her true self and tried to be a boy and a man. Her house on the Main Line was haunted (often by the woman he wanted to be). Also, like me, Boylan now is at an age when you start to tally loved ones you've lost (i.e., look at a photo of a family gathering and realize you're the only one in the photo who's still alive). I didn't know Boylan at Wesleyan -- she was one of the cool kids, always doing weird things on WESU ("Well into the '80s"). But I was there at the same time (she was two years ahead of me), and I knew a couple of the people she mentions in her warm recollections of that ultra-liberal liberal-arts campus. Of course, I listened to the book mainly to find out what she said about Wesleyan -- that and I'm a fan of her earlier novels The Planets, The Constellations and Getting In. Anyway, she does a great job performing on the audiobook -- I always enjoy it when a writer reads her or his own work (particularly Paul Auster and Dave Barry). Boylan's voices are great. Well dee well dee well.

Reading now: I'm splitting my time between "John Dies at the End," a funny horror novel by David Wong (for Halloween) and a book about the development of digital resources, titled "Digital Information Contexts."

Reading next: I have a few Amazon Vine titles to read, so I'll tackle Domestic Violets by Matthew Sherman and The Stranger's Child by Allan Hollinghurst.

Teaser Tuesday: Oct. 11

2011-10-12T17:42:00.000-07:00

For the Teaser Tuesday weekly blog meme:

From "John Dies at the End" by David Woo, p. 333:

"The school backed off on the expulsion under threat of lawsuit, and bada-boom, I wind up spending my last year at Pine View." A speck of crystal landed on the windshield.

Top 10 Tuesday: 10 books I wish I could read again for the first time

2011-10-12T17:37:00.000-07:00

Most titles on this list will have some kind of profound twist that might ruin or at least diminish the enjoyability of re-reading a text. This nifty idea for a list comes from the Top 10 Tuesday blog meme, to which I am contributing. Here goes (in no order):

1. "A Prayer for Owen Meany." This novel has a bang-up ending, for which the entire novel sets the stage, and knowing the ending spoils the overall effect of the book. This novel about the strange Owen and his less-strange friend, however, is a great one, particularly for young adults.

2. "Watchmen." Another novel with a big payoff and layers of unfolding mystery. In some ways, knowing the ending makes the novel a bit of a disappointment (that thing and all -- you know what I'm talking about) -- but the alternative history-remaking of the world is so engrossing that I'd like to discover it again, even after seeing the snooze of a movie.

3. The "Tales of the City" trilogy. Again, this novel -- really a collection of short chapters, many of which were published in a San Francisco newspaper -- is as much about discovering the bizarre natures of the characters and how far they're going to dip into life in San Francisco. A few mysteries pop up here and there, too. I read the books about the time I was discovering San Francisco (albeit from afar) myself.

4. The Cornish Trilogy. I had a roaring good time reading the three novels in Robertson Davies' trilogy -- "The Rebel Angels," "What's Bred in the Bone" and "The Lyre of Orpheus." Again, the multiple discoveries found within the pages of this long work work against re-readings (as does its length), but I'd love to discover the wide-ranging narrative all over again.

5. "A Series of Unfortunate Events." I had a lot of fun reading the 13 books in Lemony Snicket's series to my kids in ways only English majors can appreciate. Just recently, my children began re-reading the series themselves; they discovered hints of what is to come in the early novels.

6. The Starbridge Series, particularly "Mystical Paths." Really, I'd love to read all six novels in Susan Howatch's Church of England series again, just to see how she weaves together her tales and foreshadows what's to come. But "Paths" is probably my favorite, in part because it has one bang-up mystery that I'd love to see her resolve, finally. Her three novels after the Starbridge series extend the stories of many of the characters from the Church of England stories, especially the heroic Nicholas Darrow, but they don't quite provide the punch I was hoping for that's hinted at in the last one, "The Heartbreaker."

7. "Rabbit Run." I read this novel in just two or three days, secluded in my dorm room, for an English paper back in college; I was glued to it. It filled me with dreams of being a writer -- or, at least, an Updike reader.

8. "Dave Barry in Cyberspace." This humor book has a short story that plays out in AOL conversations -- something of a novelty for the time it was published (1996). In some ways, the book captures the excitement of the early Internet era (when it was the World Wide Wait), not the least because Barry was as caught up in it as many other people. I'd like to read this book for the first time because when I read it for the first time, the information superhighway had just been paved, and Wired magazine seemed to have its thumb on the pulse of the new tomorrow. Or something like that.

9. "Bright Lights, Big City." I read this book in the 1980s, while I lived the kind of life Jay McInerney wrote about in this book (only without the cocaine, thank you very much). New York is much different, as am I, but we can remember.

10. "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" -- Ah, to laugh again at "He's spending a year dead for tax purposes.":

Top Ten Tuesday for Sept. 27

2011-09-27T15:02:00.000-07:00

Top Ten Books I Want To Reread (for Top Ten Tuesday): Obviously this list represents wishful thinking, because as part of my hobby, I try to read books I haven't read before. Going back to reread books might impede my "progress." But I may devote a month next year to rereading some of my favorites.

1. The Planets by Jennifer Finney Boylan -- a hilarious romp around a town sinking into a mine fire. Really.
2. Time and Again -- a classic time-travel SF novel.
3. Fifth Business -- the first part of Robertson Davies' Deptford trilogy, so I can read the other two books.
4. From Approximately Coast to Coast, it's the Bob and Ray show -- a compilation of sketches by radio comedians Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding. I loved their work when I listened to them back in the 1970s.
5. London's Churches: I bought this opinionated guide to London churches in London in 1989. I reread it frequently, because I enjoy the history lessons the volume offers as well as the very British sensibility of the prose style.
6. Rabbit Run: I read this sophomore year of college; my memories need refreshing.
7. Wit's End by James Gaines: The first book I read about the Algonquin Round Table, and still my favorite.
8. The Odyssey: Another college read that I need to revisit at a completely different point in my life.
9. Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis: One of my mother's favorite books; I read it in high school, and now that Lewis's stock has gone down, maybe I'll see why.
10. Anatomy of Criticism by Northrop Frye: Brilliance needs to be revisited.

Plus, I want to read a collection of Robert Benchley essays, which may count as a reread because I read a lot of them when I was a kid.

Top 10 Tuesday: Sept. 20

2011-09-26T11:10:00.000-07:00

September 20: Top Ten Books I Feel As Though Everyone Has Read But Me:

1. The Da Vinci Code
2. Catcher in the Rye
3. The Time Traveler's Wife
4. Chicken Soup for the Soul
5. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
6. Gone With the Wind
7. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (and the rest of them)
8. The Kite Runner
9. Life of Pi
10. A Game of Thrones

What I'm Reading Wednesdays: Sept. 21

2011-09-21T09:40:00.000-07:00

For the WWW weekly blog meme:

What I finished: "The Family Fang" by Kevin Wilson. I took it out of the library, and since it's almost due (and holds prevent me from renewing), I decided to put it ahead of everything else I was reading. Anyway, this novel is an enjoyable exploration of one particularly maddening family and its effect on the children, a son and daughter who regret their past while messing up, for a while, their present. The Fangs are performance artists who used their children extensively in their guerrilla art -- in one case, the son, Buster, wins a beauty contest, then reveals himself to be a guy. Grown-up Buster is a novelist reduced to writing about vets making potato guns; Annie, the daughter, is a moderately famous actress who's messing up her career. What leads these children home, and then leads them down unexpected paths, is a function of their earlier lives and their parents' commitment to their art. I have a few stylistic issues (quotes should get their own paragraphs; the parents' characters are not sharply drawn), but otherwise this is a fun first novel. What's fun about it is that the Fangs are highly unusual, but in many ways they're like every other late-20th-century parents: They create their own world, in which they raise their children, and then their children must confront a world far different from the one their parents created. My parents were not performance artists, but their lives and values were so out of sync with the 1960s and '70s that my upbringing was, in some ways, a kind of performance art -- distinctly different, sometimes difficult, but also, many times, beautiful and surprising.

What I'm reading now: I'm reading (more or less at the same time) Miss New India by Bharati Mukherjee and The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler.

What I'll read next: I really want to read "The Unnamed" by Joshua Ferris (I just started it) and Domestic Violets by Mark Norman. I may read these instead of the above two titles.

Teaser Tuesdays: Sept. 20

2011-09-21T09:27:00.000-07:00

For the Teaser Tuesdays Web blog meme:

From "The Family Fang" by Kevin Wilson, p. 87:

She continued the monologue, slowly backing away from the mirror, getting smaller, retreating from view and then she suddenly rushed toward her own reflection, screaming "And after you kissed me, I always used to wipe my mouth. WIPE MY MOUTH!" The other Fangs, listening to punk rock in the living room, simply turned up the volume and pretended not to notice.

What I'm Reading Wednesdays: Sept. 14

2011-09-14T11:20:00.000-07:00

For the WWW Web blog:

What I finished reading:

"The Days of the King" by Filip Florian: The story of this novel is wonderful -- a Prussian dentist finds that one of his patients, a soldier from a noble family, is headed to Romania to become its ruler, and the soldier invites him along. The dentist, Joseph Strauss, then begins a remarkable journey through Europe to the out-of-the-way city of Bucharest, where he sets up shot in the German section. Strauss' story becomes entwined in the history of Romania as it rises from the merger of two principalities into a modern nation-state under the leadership of Karl, the soldier-turned-king. The problem here is that Florian's chatty, yada-yada narrative is light on immediacy (show more, please) and includes long, useless passages told by a tomcat. Still, the novel sheds light on a history few Americans have encountered, and Strauss himself is such a compelling character that you'll find yourself finishing the novel despite the verbiage. If the novel had been written in a more conventional(at least for English literature) narrative style, it would have been great.

What I'm reading now: It's a grab bag. Sometimes I'm reading "The Long Goodbye" by Raymond Chandler; then I'll read a few pages of "Miss New India" by Bharati Mukherjee; then I'll read some pages from a literary mystery titled "The Geographer's Library" by Jon Fasman.

What I'll read next: I really need to settle on something -- like "The History of History," "The Borrower" or "The Family Fang," all of which I've borrowed from the library.

Waiting on Wednesday: Sept. 14

2011-09-14T11:19:00.000-07:00

For the Waiting on Wednesday weekly blog meme:

"Hide Me Among the Graves": A Novel by Tim Powers. Powers' novels are often stunningly complicated: So far, I've read "Last Call," "Declare" and "Three Days to Never." I haven't gotten around to reading "The Anubis Gate," but I may toward the end of the year, and I have yet to tackle "Earthquake Weather" or "Expiration Date." Anyway, Powers' new novel will be published in March 2012, and it promises to be just as tangled as "Declare": an alternative history set in the supernatural underworld of Victorian London, with vampires, ghosts and vampire ghosts.

Teaser Tuesdays for Sept. 13

2011-09-13T11:25:00.000-07:00

For the Teaser Tuesdays Web meme:

From The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler, p. 136:

I cut all the lights except in one standing lamp and crossed to the study. The door was shut but two lamps were lit, a standing lamp at the end of the leather couch and an cowled desk lamp.

Answer to around the globe musicals quiz

2011-09-08T18:25:00.000-07:00

So I stayed up to 3 a.m. trying to find musicals that match a list of countries for a Musicals Across the Map quiz. I got almost all of them, although I had to dip into the world of operetta (albeit Broadway operetta.) Rather than let all that work go to waste, I'm posting the list here for you, my Facebook and blog friends.

England – Darling of the Day
Wales – A Time for Singing
Scotland -- Brigadoon
Ireland -- Donnybrook
Sweden – A Little Night Music
Norway – Song of Norway
Denmark – Rockabye Hamlet
Germany -- Cabaret
The Netherlands -- ???
Italy – Bravo, Giovanni
France – Can-Can
Austria – Sound of Music
Switzerland – Heidi (Neil Simon, Carolyn Leigh wrote it in the late 1950s; Samuel French has it)
Spain – Man of La Mancha
Portugal – Candide (in part)
Greece – Boys from Syracuse
Crete – Zorba
Poland -- Metro (really obscure)
Hungary – She Loves Me
Bulgaria – Chocolate Soldier (?)
Russia – Fiddler on the Roof
The Ukraine: A Day in Hollywood, a Night in the Ukraine
Israel – Milk and Honey
Iraq -- Kismet
India – Bombay Dreams
Thailand – King and I
China – Chee Chee (Rodgers and Hart)
Japan – Pacific Overtures
Vietnam – Miss Saigon
Singapore – Song of Singapore (an off-Broadway spoof)
Australia – Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
Polynesia – South Pacific
The Philippines -- ???
Egypt -- Nefertiti
South Africa – Lost in the Stars
Uganda --- Book of Mormon
Nigeria – Fela!
Morocco – Desert Song
Argentina -- Evita
Brazil -- Sarava
Canada (Quebec) – Happy Time
Canada (Saskatchewan) – Rose Marie
Canada (Alberta) ???
Canada (Prince Edward Island) – Anne of Green Gables
Canada (Yukon Territory)-- Foxy
The West Indies – House of Flowers
Jamaica -- Jamaica
Cuba – Guys and Dolls (in part)
Mexico – Rio Rita
Panama – Panama Hattie

Waiting on Wednesday: Sept. 7

2011-09-07T21:46:00.000-07:00

For the Waiting on Wednesdays blog meme:

"The Revisionists" by Thomas Mullen: Here we have what promises to be a literary time-travel novel, in which a guardian from a perfect future returns to the past to make sure the future stays perfect. In line with "Super Sad True Love Story," "The Leftovers" and "Zone One" (and unlike the relatively optimistic "Visit From the Goon Squad," Mullen seems to be saying that America's future is, well, broken, and that it has to get really broken before it's fixed. I'm looking forward to this title almost as much as "The Art of Fielding."

What I'm Reading Wednesdays: Sept. 7

2011-09-07T09:37:00.000-07:00

For the WWW weekly blog meme:

What I finished reading:

"The Magician King": Lev Grossman's follow-up to "The Magicians" is a popcorn for the Williamsburg crowd -- it combines meta-fantasy tropes (the characters know they're supposed to be fantasy characters, but they still have real-world issues) with a certain raw-edge look at the powers that rule Fillory, the fantasy land in danger at the beginning of the novel. Quentin, the central character of "The Magicians" and one of Fillory's four kings and queens, cedes half the book to his childhood crush Julia, whose backstory takes up the rest of the novel. The stories find their confluence in Fillory, where magic is going crazy. Quentin, desperate to be a hero, at first hesitates when starting on a quest, then throws himself in, only to get himself (and Julia) exiled from Fillory and back to our reality. Many familiar characters from the first book show up, and some new ones add to the festivities. Still, you don't get quite the sense of giddy discovery in "The Magicians" (tempered humorously by rigorous training at Brakebills). Grossman is great at piling up the heartbreaking costs of quests and fantasy, and at the end, we're left waiting for the (possible) third entry in this saga.

"All Families are Psychotic": But not quite this psychotic. Douglas Coupland's black comedy chronicles the Drummond family as they converge in Orlando, awaiting for sister Sarah's ascent on the space shuttle. The mother and father (Janet and Ted) are divorced; Ted has a trophy wife. The brothers, Wade and Bryan, are habitual losers -- Wade, a veteran of many shady professions, is broke because of a medical procedure to allow his Christian wife, Beth, to become pregnant, and Bryan burns Gaps with his annoying, pregnant girlfriend, Shw. (No vowels.) Meanwhile, Janet and Ted battle medical issues of their own, and Janet is forced to confront and deal with her past. The book is full of random occurrences -- robberies, family members run into each other, sudden deaths -- as well as incredibly bad behavior. One subplot involves dealing with a stolen letter of huge value. Meanwhile, Sarah, seemingly the least scarred person (an astronaut with a birth defect), may be the one with the most problems. Coupland is really writing about genetics, medicine, addiction, faith and the disgrace of contemporary culture -- he's particularly unfair to Daytona Beach -- and once you figure that out, the novel becomes much more enjoyable.

What I'm reading now: I'm reading two books at once, more more or less: "Miss New India" by Bharati Mukherjee, a novel about a young woman escaping her traditional upbringing by going to Bangalore; and "The Days of the King" (Amazon Vine), a novel by Filip Florian about the emergence of Bucharest on the European scene in the 19th century (it's translated from the Romaina by Alistair Ian Blyth). "Miss New India" is for a book club.

What I'll read next: I want to get back to "The Indian Clerk" by David Leavitt, then "Domestic Violets," an Amazon Vine title. But I may bag both and go with finishing "Wolf Hall" by Hillary Mantel, the "Ice Trilogy" or even one of the novels in a Flann O'Brien anthology. I also want to read Raymond Chandler's "The Long Goodbye." I may declare October "anthology month" and read only novels and short stories collected in anthologies.

Top Ten Tuesday for Sept. 6: Sequels I'm dying to read

2011-09-06T11:41:00.000-07:00

Top 10 sequels I'm dying to read (including one I read last week), for the Top 10 weekly blog meme:

1. "The Magician King" -- the sequel (perhaps No. 2 in a trilogy) to Lev Grossman's "The Magicians," about Millennial magicians in the land of Fillory -- whoops! I already read it. It's extremely exciting and moving. Also, it's the kind of fantasy I like: you learn where they get their money and go to the bathroom.

2. "Pollen" by Jeff Noon -- This Neuromancer meets William S. Burroughs sequel is to "Vurt," about drugs that transport people to an alternate or meta-reality, and how Vurt is taking over reality. The book has been on my shelf for years.

3. "Framley Parsonage" by Anthony Trollope -- Again, on my shelf for years. I vowed that before I die I'll read all the Chronicles of Barsetshire; this is the sequel of sorts to "Barchester Towers" and "Doctor Thorne."

4. "A Wind in the Door": Book Two in the Time Quartet, a sequel to "A Wrinkle in Time," which I loved when I was a kid. I didn't know until I was an adult that "Wrinkle" had three sequels; I know it's a kids' book, and I should read L'Engle's adult books. But what the heck?

5. "Lay of the Land": Richard Ford's sequels to "The Sportswriter" and "Independence Day." One of the books I need to catch up on from a few years ago.

6. "A Buyer's Market": Book two in Anthony Powell's "Dance to the Music of Time" sequence; this one is the sequel to "A Question of Upbringing."

7. "The Manticore": Robertson Davies' sequel to the brilliant "Fifth Business." I have to re-read "Fifth Business," however, since it's been 25 years since I read it.

8. "Snuff": A sequel, of sorts to Terry Pratchett's "Thud," in that it involves Commander Sam Vimes, reluctant duke and all around great copper. The book comes out in September.

9. "The Eye in the Door": Book Two in the World War I trilogy by Pat Barker, and the sequel to "Regeneration." The novels involve the effects of the war on British officers, particularly those who must deal with "shell shock," now known as PTSD. Barker began several stories in "Regeneration," including historical figures like poet Wilfred Owen, and I want to find out what happens next -- the definition of the desire for a sequel.

10. "Home" by Marilynne Robinson: Not strictly a sequel, but rather the story of "Gilead," a Pulitzer winner that actually deserved the Pulitzer. It's on my TBR stack.

Teaser Tuesday: Sept. 6

2011-09-05T23:12:00.000-07:00

For the Teaser Tuesday blog meme:

"All Families are Psychotic" by Douglas Coupland: p. 239:

Cissy's hand was so warm and dry, so hard to imagine buckets of warm, potent blood flowing within, but Cissy's blood did flow, dripping onto the tablecloth. Janet watched as blood seeped out through cracks in the bonds of the two hands.

Waiting on Wednesday: Aug. 31

2011-08-31T08:11:00.000-07:00

For the Waiting on Wednesday blog meme:

"Luminous Airplanes" by Paul La Farge: I read La Farge's "Haussmann" quite some time ago. This novel promises both to be a time-bending look at San Francisco during the dot.com boom, a small town to which a programmer returns and a romance. The novel comes with a content-rich online component, too. I'm not sure about the online component (when I read for pleasure, I want to be away from my computer), but I'm willing to give it a try.

What I'm Reading Wednesdays: Aug. 31

2011-08-31T07:52:00.000-07:00

For the WWW weekly blog meme.

What I've finished:

"Zone One" by Colson Whitehead: Whitehead trades chills for an overwhelming sense of dread in this novel about the years after Last Night, when an infection that turns humans into flesh-eating zombies hits the critical level, and civilization as we know it ceases. The main character, Mark Spitz (a nickname), recalls his past, mediocre B-student life and his struggle to survive after Last Night while he works in a sweeper team ridding lower Manhattan of straggling zombies. Whitehead kills suspense through a series of flash-forwards, but that's intentional; his point is not to build shock and horror but to pile on a feeling of dread and doom. In this, he succeeds, but to what end? Is this a parable for global warming (that's hinted at)? Is it a satire of humans trying to rebuild society (the new capital, Buffalo, claims that civilization is coming back and survivors are rising like a phoenix from the ashes)? Or is it a character study of a person who wields his mediocrity as a shield against zombie annihilation? I'm not sure, yet, but at least Whitehead concocts compelling characters amid the chaos and rot. This novel seems to be a companion to "Super Sad True Love Story" -- is this decade going to be one of irreversible decline and collapse? Maybe.

"Supreme Courtship" by Christopher Buckley: I listened to this one; Anne Heche is the narrator. This novel is pretty light satire of Washington, D.C. The novel follows TV judge Pepper Cartwright, star of a highly rated courtroom reality show, as a beleaguered, recalcitrant president nominates her to the Supreme Court. Buckley adds a whole series of personality and background oddities to Cartwright's character, including lightning strikes, the slaying of Lee Harvey Oswald and a televangelist dad. He kind of piles it on. But the novel is lightly likable, in a well-I'm-driving-and-it-beats-boredom kind of way, and the ending was actually rather suspenseful. Unfortunately, the narrative gets sidetracked into a vain senator's foray into playing "Potus" on a television series.

What I'm Reading Now: "The Magician King" came in from the library, and I have 10 days before it's overdue (a new policy with the Tuscaloosa Public Library), so I just dove in. So far, it's exciting and extremely puzzling. I'm glad I read the first one ("The Magicians") just a few weeks ago.

What I think I'll read next: Either back to "The Indian Clerk" or "All Families are Psychotic." Then for a book club, I need to read that new Sherlock Holmes as Justin Bieber novel and maybe either "Midnight's Children" or "Age of Shiva."

Top Ten Tuesday for Aug. 30

2011-08-30T08:25:00.000-07:00

Top Ten Books That Are On The Top Of My TBR List For Fall, for the Top Ten Tuesday blog.

1. "The Indian Clerk" by David Leavitt. I started reading this when I received a bunch of books from the Amazon Vine program. So now I have to go back.

2. "Freedom" by Jonathan Franzen. I've waited more than a year to read this.

3. "Wolf Hall" by Hillary Mantel. Another one I started.

4. "Let the Great World Spin" by Colin McCann. I'm going to read this on a plane.

5. "Riders in the Chariot" by Patrick White. Australia's Nobel winner.

6. "Spud: The Madness Continues" by John van de Ruit. I read the first one for a class in 2009, and I thought it was great. How many South African YA faux-diary novels have you read?

7. "The Yiddish Policeman's Union" by Michael Chabon. Another one I've been putting off reading.

8. "The Man in the Wooden Hat" by Jane Gardam

9. "Framley Parsonage" by Anthony Trollope. I read the first two in the Barchester series in the early '90s, and I intend to finish sometime this decade.

10. "The Deptford Trilogy" by Robertson Davies. I read "Fifth Business" in the mid-1980s, but I want to restart it. I read the Cornish trilogy a couple of years ago.

Teaser Tuesdays for Aug. 30

2011-08-30T07:47:00.000-07:00

For the Teaser Tuesday blog meme:

From "The Magician King" by Lev Grossman, p. 308:

"I can see there is a certain logic to it. And there is a great deal for the Order to do in the Nietherlands."

Waiting on Wednesday: Aug. 23

2011-08-24T07:38:00.000-07:00

For the Waiting on Wednesday blog meme:

"The Vanishers" by Heidi Julavitz: I very much enjoyed Julavitz's "The Uses of Enchantment." I searched Amazon.com to see if she had anything in the hopper, and I found a teaser for this title (no cover yet). Apparently, the novel involves a psychic who gets caught up in a missing-person case. I'm wondering how a member of the Believer set will handle a novel with tinges of psychic fantasy.

What I'm Reading Wednesdays: Aug. 24

2011-08-23T19:38:00.000-07:00

For the WWW weekly blog meme:

What I finished reading:

"My Life, the Theater and Other Tragedies" by Allen Zadoff: This backstage novel uses some conventional YA riffs to tell a story about a teenager in love with the theater -- particularly in lighting design -- who must prevail over depression (the result of his father's death), his mother's grief, high school cliques and love. The novel has something of a cardboard bad guy, and the line between techie and cast member is a little too neat -- certainly not my experience in high school. Zadoff's prose is serviceable, and the main character feels genuine pain. Also, I liked the chapter heading references to Shakespeare (it's four days to a potentially disastrous production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream"). An Amazon Vine offering.

"The Magicians" by Lev Grossman: Another "guy novel," one that merges the struggle of not knowing who you are (a problem that seems to afflict high-achieving Brooklyn students quite a bit) set amid a reference-laden world of magic. Grossman's flights of fancy are numerous and spectacular (one set piece turns his characters into geese for a spectacular flight), and he layers the action with a great deal of young-adult angst, sex and gritty, realistic characters. What if you're aiming for Princeton but end up at an upstate school for magicians? What if you were doing magic tricks that turn out to have real magic in them? What if magic enables you to get everything you want? And what if the fantasy world you dreamed of visiting turned out to be tainted? The central character is highly sympathetic, even as he makes mistakes and a does lot of unsympathetic things. The key here is that these characters re steeped in fantasy fiction, and their knowledge of that fiction (particularly Harry Potter) sometimes gets in the way of their objectives, or even their perception of reality. This novel is extremely exciting; I'm looking forward to the sequel.

"Language of Others" by Clare Morrall: I've been listening to the book for some time on my MP3 player in the car. It took me a long time to get through most of it; then I had to reload it, and for some reason I wasn't able to get NetLibrary's download to work. So I requested the novel from ILL, and I was able to pick up where I had left off listening and finish the book. That said, this novel looks at a girl, a skilled musician, who is shut off from other people (knowledgeable readers will know why, although she doesn't) and how she grows up to deal with a bad marriage (to a narcissistic ex-violinist) and a troubled son. The novel is set partly at Audlands, a falling-down stately home of England where the main character grew up. For Jessie, the main character, the novel depicts a triumph of connecting with other people in her life in spite of her differences. Each human interaction, which she approaches with supreme self-consciousness, becomes a little victory as she learns to assert herself. It's a good novel, and the author is quite skilled in offering us telling images, such as the busts of the Caesars that line the Long Gallery at Audlands.

What I'm reading: "Zone One" by Colson Whitehead: I'm not a huge fan of zombie fiction, but Whitehead is a noted author, and I've procrastinated in reading any of his books. So I'm reading this for Amazon Vine. I'm also listening to "Supreme Courtship" by Christopher Buckley, although Anne Heche can't seem to pronounce "Nevada" correctly.

What I think I'll read next: I think I'll go back to reading "The Indian Clerk."

Teaser Tuesdays for Aug. 23

2011-08-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

For the Teaser Tuesdays weekly blog meme:

From "Zone One" by Colson Whitehead, p. 214:

"If the beings they destroyed were their own creations, and not the degraded remnants of the people described on the things' driver's licenses, so be it. We never see other people anyway, only the monsters we make of them."

Waiting on Wednesday: Aug. 17

2011-08-17T12:30:00.000-07:00

For the Waiting on Wednesday blog:

"Look, I Made a Hat" by Stephen Sondheim: The promised follow-up to "Finishing the Hat," which I received for Christmas last year, will be published Nov. 22. Sondheim will publish his lyrics for shows after "Merrily" as well as his work for film and television. The book promises to include his many reworkings of "Road Show," the musical he's been working on for nearly 20 years, as well as "Passion" and "Sunday in the Park With George." It's hard to read lyrics whose tunes are unfamiliar, but he includes many theatrical reminiscences and rants as well.

What I'm Reading Wednesdays: Aug. 17

2011-08-17T09:56:00.000-07:00

For the WWW weekly book meme:

What I've read: "The Art of Fielding" by Chad Harbach. This book is a guy book. Guys will love this book. The novel is about baseball and small colleges; being a father; being a lover; and throwing to first. It's 500 pages, but it feels like 300. A young shortstop named Henry, who has a perfect fielding record at shortstop, gets recruited to a small Wisconsin college by Schwartz, a born leader who is the team's catcher. But when Henry accidentally hits his roommate in the face with an errant throw, things begin to fall apart. Meanwhile, the president of the college, a Melville scholar, finds he has fallen in love with one of the students, even as his daughter returns from a horrible marriage. The character names are hilarious, the novel is filled with references to "Moby-Dick," and it even has snide references to Amherst. College and baseball: What more could you want?

"Farewell My Lovely" by Raymond Chandler: I listened to his in my car; Elliott Gould performs on the audiobook. I had been curious about Chandler, even though when I was in seventh grade I had read "The Maltese Falcon" by Dashiell Hammett and hadn't liked it. I've read several novels set in Los Angeles, however, so I decided to try this one through the relatively painless medium of the car stereo. The book is hilarious -- Chandler has a way of twisting similes and metaphors until they scream. And Philip Marlowe is incredibly sarcastic. I also liked the way Chandler purposely withholds Marlowe's thoughts until the end -- it's as if Marlowe himself is holding back on us, just as he holds back on the police and everyone he doesn't trust. The mystery itself is easily guessable, but how Marlowe solves it isn't -- and all sorts of existential questions hang around the edges (just like in real literature!). Of course, this is real literature at its most American, and you can almost hear the influence it had on Updike's metaphors (that is, if Updike read Raymond Chandler). I'm going to read "The Long Goodbye" later, then watch the Robert Altman movie.

What I'm Reading: "The Magicians" by Lev Grossman. Grossman's narrative is exciting and inventive, even as it references a whole series of fantasy books, particularly "Lord of the Rings," "Narnia" and Harry Potter. I'm reading this now so I can read the sequel, "The Magician King," soon.

What I'm Planning to Read: I'll probably try to finish "My Life, the Theatre and Other Tragedies," then read "Zone One" so I can get those off my Amazon Vine review list.

Teaser Tuesdays for Aug. 16

2011-08-16T08:23:00.000-07:00

For the Teaser Tuesday blog meme:

From "The Magicians" by Lev Grossman, p. 112:

Everything and everybody was still. The man on the stage was the only thing in the world still in motion.

Crazy (or simply odd) novel titles

2011-08-14T13:09:00.000-07:00

This post is in response to The Crazy for Books post for Aug. 14 and the Freebie Broke and Bookish Top 10 Tuesday.

Here's the question:
“Let’s talk crazy book titles! Highlight one or two (or as many as you like!) titles in your personal collection that have the most interesting titles! If you can’t find any, feel free to find one on the internet!”
OK, I usually enjoy strange, esoteric books. So I'll give you a list of 10 (in no order):

1. You Must Be This Happy to Enter by Elizabeth Crane. Crane writes short stories filled with brilliant, looping sentences uttered by beleaguered female narrators. She'd be one of my favorite authors if only she wrote more. Another of her collections is called When the Messenger is Hot.

2. The Tetherballs of Bougainville by Mark Leyner. Before he started writing medical non-fiction, Leyner created some fantastic, outlandish tales (always about himself). His other works have equally inventive titles: Et Tu, Babe and My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist. Tetherballs features a father who survives his own execution, only to enter a random, surprise-oriented execution program.

3. Vurt by Jeff Noon. British SF shines in this oddly titled virtual-reality yarn about a realm entered through drugs -- and a main character who's partly composed of the stuff. Vurt is short for virtual reality, but its status as a non-word makes it intriguing.

4. If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino: This series of stories with no endings has a title that wraps around the book like wax paper – it’s a clue to the puzzle of this metafictional farrago.

5. The Three-legged Hootch Dancer by Michael Resnick. My daughter and I came across this paperback when we were going through my father's thousand-plus SF collection. I have no idea what it's about, but the cover is hilarious, and I'm going to read it. I swear. I'm sure it's satire, but it reminds me of that one stripper in "Total Recall."

6. Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson. A classic of avant-garde fiction, the title itself is a paradox: Wittgenstein was gay. The novel is a series of sentences that seem to tell a story about a woman who may be the last person on Earth as she recounts a journey to a beach house she's found. Or something. A difficult but rewarding novel.

7. The Unnameable by Samuel Beckett. Hey, Sam, if it was unnameable, then how come you gave it a name? Heh heh heh.

8. Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link. I wish I had a dollar for all the people who thought this was a how-to book about magic. (Teaches me to bring books with strange titles to work.)

9. Old Filth by Jane Gardam. A wonderful novel, but you have to explain to passers-by that Filth is not a state of uncleanliness but rather an acronym -- Failed in London? Try Hong Kong -- which describes the career of the main character.

10. I am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to be Your Class President by Josh Lieb -- how can you NOT want to read a book with that title?

Waiting On Wednesday: Aug. 9

2011-08-10T09:53:00.000-07:00

For the Waiting on Wednesday blog meme:

"Goliath" by Scott Westerfeld. This rip-roaring evo-punk alternative history of World War I began with "Leviathan" and continued with "Behemoth." The premise is that the world is divided among Darwinists (Britain) -- who use the theories of Charles Darwin to breed monstrous bio-war machines, as in a whale-like dirigible -- and clankers (Germany), who stick to steel-and-steam technology to build their own monstrous war machines. In the middle is Deryn, an English girl pretending to be a boy so she can belong to the crew of the Leviathan, and Alek, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, who wants to end the massive war just taking shape. "Goliath" promises to conclude the trilogy as the gang sets sail for Darwinist Japan. Westerfeld combines his theme of biological SF with an exciting yarn. Listen to the book on CD when it comes out (Alan Cumming does a great job with the narration) and then check out the book, which will have great illustrations by Keith Thompson.

What I'm Reading Wednesdays: Aug. 10

2011-08-10T09:37:00.000-07:00

For the WWW weekly blog meme:

What I have read: "The Leftovers" by Tom Perrotta (from Amazon Vine). Perrotta returns to the suburbs, only this time a cataclysmic event of ambiguous (or no) meaning has occurred: Millions of people have disappeared. Was this the Rapture? Nobody's quite sure, because the people taken were from all walks of life and all religions. So what do you do when you're left behind? Well, you drop out of college, join religious cults, get elected mayor, run with a fast crowd -- and end up with the pregnant teen who may be bearing the Messiah. The novel takes place three years after the Sudden Departures, and at that ironic distance, Perrotta shows people slowly falling apart or coming back together. One particularly compelling character, Nora, after her husband and two young children vanished, takes to riding her bike and watching "SpongeBob." Kevin, whose wife leaves the family for a communal cult (they walk in pairs, dress in white, smoke and disrupt public events) tries to deal with his teenage daughter, slipping out of the A-track at school, and a friend who's living with them. And the son, Tom, falls in with a hugger-guru whose private life is shocking. This novel is really wonderful; it has suspense, surprises and deeply depicted emotions. I think it's going to make the Pulitzer final list.

What I'm reading now: "The Art of Fielding" by Chad Harbach (from Amazon Vine). This novel is about baseball, which I love; college, which I also love; and successes and failures. So far, it's moving along very quickly; I think it's going to be big this fall.

What I'll read next: I may return to "The Indian Clerk," (because I like to read novels by Tom Perrotta and David Leavitt in tandem), or I may try to finish the outstanding Vine books I have, including "Zone One" and "My Life, the Theater, and Other Tragedies."

Teaser Tuesdays for Aug. 9

2011-08-10T08:55:00.000-07:00

For the Teaser Tuesdays weekly Web meme blog:

From "The Art of Fielding" by Chad Harbach: Page 149:

"A too-precise longing zipped down Schwartz's spine. Duckling was his favorite, and he'd been craving it lately, in the absence of any money with which to buy a bottle."

Top Ten Tuesdays for Aug. 9

2011-08-09T11:12:00.000-07:00

This blog post is for Top 10 Tuesdays at this site.

The topic this week is "Top 10 Underrated Books" This one is particularly hard, because most books find at least a few fans, given the diffusion of the reading audience. It's easier to come up with a list of underrated films or television shows, because the general movie-going public frequently ignores good films. But there's no general reading audience -- two books can top the best-seller lists and find no readers in common. (On the other hand, I could easily come up with a list of 10 overrated books.) So here is my list of books that I think are obscure:

1. "Into Hot Air" by Chris Elliott: Elliott, the comic actor who burst upon the seen on "Late Night With David Letterman" and has produced a lot of underrated work -- "Get a Life," Dogbert on the "Dilbert" TV cartoon -- has written two satiric novels -- "The Shroud of the Thwacker" and "Into Hot Air." Neither seems to have hit the big time, and I read one tepid review of "Hot Air." Nevertheless, I love his work, because he uses the vehicle of satire to create a metafiction (the main character is always him, as with Mark Leyner) that both spoofs Mount Everest books and popular culture. I love the Martin Sheen caricature, who goes through the whole novel with tape over his mouth.

2. "Love Me": Garrison Keillor's radio personality and Lake Wobegon novels unjustly overshadow this yarn about the life of a writer who abandons Minnesota in pursuit of the Great American Novel in New York. Keillor hilariously turns famed New Yorker editor William Shawn into an outgoing adventurist. The novel is a fun spoof of the literary life and incorporates an advice column Keillor used to write ("Mr. Blue"), in which he doles out help to a beleaguered, over-matched chief executive.

3. "Memoir From Antproof Case" by Mark Helprin: I think Helprin's conservative politics runs interference with critical receptions of his work. This novel incorporates a man's journey from a childhood marred by the violent death of his parents to adventures in World War II to his ultimate defeat of a monstrous bank and his retreat to South America. Helprin's writing is at times difficult (he deals with a great many technical details of flying a World War II plane), and the structure of the novel is more satiric than the beautiful (and better-received, I think) "A Soldier of the Great War." But the diatribes against coffee are well worth the trip. He's one of the writers I wish would produce more novels.

4. "Strong Motion": Jonathan Franzen's second novel didn't receive supportive reviews like his debut novel ("The Twenty-Seventh City") and didn't get the raucous response of "The Corrections" or "Freedom." It's basically a second novel with a particularly annoying protagonist, a near-hermit radio worker who uncovers a plot to conceal earthquake-causing pollution. What people remember most is a chapter devoted to a raccoon who lives in the urban landscape north of Boston. Yes, Franzen piles on this history a little too much (one whole chapter is devoted to the accumulation of wealth in New England), but the novel has tremendous atmosphere -- it feels like the Boston I knew from the 1970s and '80s.

5. "Sunnyside": Another second novel, this one by Glen David Gold, seems to have slipped by people's notice after his first, extremely exciting historical novel "Carter Beats the Devil" made a splash in 2001. I just finished reading "Sunnyside," and although it doesn't have the bang-up plot twists of "Carter," it does give an easily readable, panoramic sweep of the World War I era and contains a hilarious and traumatic trip to Russia, where U.S. and allied soldiers fought the Bolsheviks after the Russian Revolution. The three main characters -- a lighthouse keeper who ends up in the Army; an engineer who ends up in Russia; and Charlie Chaplin -- never really meet, but their stories form the groundwork of an entertaining contemplation of the meaning of time, history, the movies and American progress.

6. "Villette" -- Everybody reads "Jane Eyre," but "Villette," Charlotte Bronte's last novel, offers its own rewards. A woman who suffers a series of tragedies (so bad that she can't even mention them) moves to Belgium, where she finds employment teaching English and goes through a series of existential crises, a strange courtship by a fellow teacher, and a ghost. I read this as part of a summer blog challenge, and I very much enjoyed it. (And I don't read a whole lot of 19th century novels.) The end is extremely moving and certainly ambiguous.

7. "Brazil": John Updike explores the history and sociology of Brazil, hanging it on the Tristan and Isolde story. Critics get annoyed with Updike when he ventures beyond eastern Pennsylvania or New England, but I really enjoyed this extremely sensual riff on magical realism. The young lovers who form the core of the novel are compelling. And, of course, you get Updike's self-consciously luminous prose.

8. "The Keep": Jennifer Egan's puzzle set in a European castle and an American prison (who is the prisoner? What is the crime?) didn't get the acclaim her Pulitzer-winning "A Visit From the Goon Squad" did, but really, who's counting? The castle itself was a character, and as the people rebuilding it descend into its spooky depths, secrets pop out all over the place. Even the part set in the United States was intriguing.

9. "Theatre": Somerset Maugham's literary reputation has waxed and waned, and this novel isn't one of his best-known titles. But I love theater novels, and this one abounds in backstage romance. The main character, an aging, self-absorbed actress, is so compelling, and the world she lives in is so intoxicating, that I wished the novel wouldn't end. It was made into a so-so movie called "Being Julia" with Annette Bening.

10. "Speak Now": Kaylie Jones has written several novels and a memoir. For some reason, this novel doesn't seem to have gained any traction at all (and I remember one negative review) despite the fact that the book has a strong plot and compelling characters. It's about obsessions -- getting rid of an obsession with booze and an all-time-bad boyfriend, or being obsessed with a woman so much that you commit crimes for her. Sure it has a melodramatic ending, but so does "Anna Karenina."

Waiting on Wednesday: Aug. 3

2011-08-03T10:52:00.000-07:00

For the Waiting on Wednesday blog:

"The Night Circus": Another blogger put me on to this novel, set to be released in September. A circus shows up in town; it's open only at night, and the two magicians who are a part of the act turn out to have issues. Or at least that's what I gathered from the Amazon.com description. Anyway, it sounds like a fun high fantasy novel. I think the novel, by Erin Morgenstern, already was published in the UK.

What We're Reading Wednesday: Aug. 3

2011-08-03T09:15:00.000-07:00

For the WWW blog:

What I've finished reading:

"The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown": New York writer Paul Malmont follows up his pulp-inspired novel "The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril" with a sequel that involves many of the same characters, particularly the SF writers Robert Heinlein (pre-libertarian) and L. Ron Hubbard (pre-clams). This time, Malmont brings in two new characters -- the young chemist and SF aspirant Isaac Asimov and the fantasy writer L. Sprague de Camp.. The plot involves a research team at the Philadelphia Naval Yard made up almost entirely of SF writers and weaves a tale around Tesla, the Tunguska Event, nuclear fission, the Empire State Building, the "Philadelphia experiment," Alaska, Tonga and the weird guy who started JPL. Plus, there's a cameo featuring a Air Corps pilot you'll recognize at once. It's even more fun if you're familiar with the works of the SF writers.

"Newsreel": I think I set some kind of record for the time elapsed between buying a novel and reading it. I bought this one in 1981 when it came out, and I just finished it a couple of days ago -- 30 years! It's a first edition I've hauled along with me on several moves. The novel is by Irvin Faust, who was the head guidance counselor at my high school (and who advised me on the novella I wrote as a senior project). He frequently makes lists of neglected mid-list writers. His narrator, Speed, is a World War II veteran set adrift in New York; he goes through several careers (actor, journalist, fiction writer) and a couple of marriages as he obsesses over his experiences in the "ETO" and his love for Dwight Eisenhower (he wants his daughter to marry David). It's a furious, ribald excursion through the 1940s, '50s and '60s written from the still-fresh perspective of the 1970s.

What I'm reading now:

I got an advance copy through Amazon Vine of "The Leftovers" by Tom Perrotta, and I started right in on it. The novel looks at life in a leafy suburb three years after many people around the world disappeared -- but no one's sure if it was the Rapture or not. People seem to have been taken randomly. People start veering off into cults or affairs or alcohol or drugs -- things are coming unglued. So far, so good.

What I'll read next:

I'll return to "The Indian Clerk" by David Leavitt, which I started reading after "Newsreel," then I'll probably tackle another advance copy -- first novel "The Art of Fielding" by Chad Harbach.

Teaser Tuesdays for Aug. 2

2011-08-02T12:39:00.000-07:00

For the Teaser Tuesdays Web posting.

From "The Leftovers" by Tom Perrotta: http://www.tomperrotta.net/

Page 149:

They both turned at the same time, startled by the rapid clop of footsteps in the otherwise quiet hallway. Nora knew it was Karen even before she burst into view, rounding the corner like she was late for class.

What I'm Reading Wednesdays: July 27

2011-07-27T11:50:00.000-07:00

For the What I'm Reading Wednesdays blog:

Finished reading: "When I Lived in Modern Times" by Linda Grant. This short novel follows the journey of a young Jewish woman to Palestine before the creation of the state of Israel. Left rootless by the death of her single mother in England, the daughter is sent by her mother's lover to Tel Aviv, the modern "white city," which is in turmoil as Zionist settlers conduct guerrilla warfare against the British. Fitting in more with the colonialists than the Jews, she pretends to be a Christian hairdresser even as she spies for her guerrilla boyfriend. The novel dissects the historical ironies of life in Palestine before 1948. The narrative is extremely compelling and even-handed.

Reading now: "The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown" by Paul Malmont. This is an enormously fun work of historical fiction set during World War II. Famed "scientifiction" writers Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, L. Sprague de Camp and L. Ron Hubbard try to solve the mystery of a Tesla invention that went horribly wrong. One or two other famous people show up for cameos.

What's next: I keep putting of "A Moment in the Sun" (not quite the moment yet). Instead, I decided to read "Newsreel" by Irvin Faust (the former head guidance counselor at my high school). I bought the book (first edition) in 1980, so it took me 31 years to read it.

Teaser Tuesdays for July 26

2011-07-26T13:43:00.000-07:00

Addition to the Teasers Tuesday blog challenge:

From "The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown" by Paul Malmont, page 124:

Hubbard seemed completely oblivious. Even Heinlein wasn't sure why Sprague was upset -- he couldn't even imagine that the two men had ever met before.

What I'm Reading Wednesdays: July 20

2011-07-20T16:31:00.000-07:00

For the What I'm Reading Wednesday blog:

Finished reading: For some reason I'm in a reading groove right now. I finished "Sunnyside" by Glen David Gold and "The Nobodies Album" by Carolyn Parkhurst.

I had been meaning to read "Sunnyside" since I bought it in 2009, and I finally breezed through all 550 pages in a few days. "Sunnyside" is an enormously fun sweep through World War I focusing on three men -- a would-be engineer who rides the rails and then ends up in Russia fighting the Bolsheviks; a lighthouse keeper who through interlocking circumstances ends up with a pair of dogs in France; and Charlie Chaplin, who faces a crisis of confidence in his craft. All three are touched somehow by the same girl, who has her own story. Spirits and psychological comments on fame frame the novel. It doesn't cohere as much as Gold's exciting debut novel, "Carter Beats the Devil" (which delved into magic as well as lots of other things and made my Best of the Aughts list), but Gold has a great talent for telling complicated stories and evoking historical periods, particularly San Francisco and Archangel, Russia. (The Allied invasion of Russia at the end of World War I is an unjustly forgotten episode in American history. I knew about it from my father, who knew about it from his father. My grandfather, who was in the Navy, was standing on a dock ready to sail to Russia when he fell over with the Spanish flu. He recovered, but he ended up not going.)

"The Nobodies Album" was published last year, and I picked up the paperback, which just came out. I've read Parkhurst's other novels, The Dogs of Babylon and Lost and Found (the latter made my best of the aughts list). This novel follows a novelist who, amid rewriting the endings of all her novels, discovers that her rock-star son has been charged with killing his girlfriend. Like "Our Tragic Universe," another novel tinged with metafiction about an author's personal life, "Nobodies" contemplates the nature of storytelling and leaves us wondering if the ending is actually true, or is the final one -- of course it's invented, but is it invented by Parkhurst or her main character? The male characters aren't as vividly drawn as the female characters (unlike Lost and Found), but I enjoyed the "endings" of the "fictional" novels and the narrator's exploration of her own life, which is in and of itself a story.

What I'm reading now: I picked up When I Lived in Modern Times by Linda Grant off my shelf. I bought it remaindered the same time I picked up a preorder for Deathly Hallows in 2007, so I gues it's about time to read it. The novel follows a Jewish woman who emigrates to Palestine near the founding of Israel. It's pretty short -- it's a warm-up to another long novel I want to read.

What I should read next: Either Darkmans by Nicola Barker or I'm going to read John Sayles' A Moment in the Sun, all 955 pages of it, before I have to take it back to the library.

What I'm Reading Wednesdays: July 13

2011-07-13T10:47:00.000-07:00

Contributing to the What I'm Reading Wednesdays blog:

What I just finished reading: I had a delightful time reading "The Wicked Pavilion" by Dawn Powell. This novel was the second I had read by her; I read "The Locusts Have No King" back in the 1990s. This one was less focused but a great deal more fun. Powell tracks the comings and goings of habitues at a Village restaurant named the Cafe Julien in the early 1950s; the large cast of characters (for a novel of fewer than 300 pages) include a bearded, broke, aging artist; an up-and-coming businessman who obsesses over a woman he met there; a tall single matron of a Boston family living the bohemian life in NYC; and a party girl mistaken for a prostitute. The novel goes in many unexpected directions (including Tottenville) and provides a great deal of laughter and pathos; nobody is taken very seriously, and the novel's overall tone is frothy, even as dark clouds hover over the characters.

What I'm reading now: I've finally begun "Sunnyside," the historical novel by Glen David Gold, author of Carter Beats the Devil. I bought it when it first came out, but I haven't gotten around to it. So far, the large canvas is pleasing indeed; the novel is set during World War I and promises to take us from Crescent City, Calif., to Russia. Right now, Charlie Chaplin is founding his studio. This will be book three in my six-book Chunkster reading challenge as well as a book I promised to read off my shelf.

What I think I'll read next: I was going to read "A Moment in the Sun" by John Sayles, a 950-page opus set a few years before "Sunnyside"; if I read 50 pages a day, I could finish it in 20 days (assuming I can renew it from the library). Instead, I might read the Ice trilogy by Vladimir Sorokin or one of the clear-my-shelf novels -- "Freedom" by Jonathan Franzen or The Yiddish Policeman's Union" by Michael Chabon.

Teaser Tuesdays for May 31

2011-05-31T09:23:00.000-07:00

For the Teaser Tuesdays Web site.

From : Old Filth by Jane Gardam (New York: Europa Editions, 2006): p. 211

But Eddie, exalted to be free, warm, deflowered and full of bananas, lay on the sand. The dangerous part of the journey was over.

What I'm Reading Wednesdays: May 4

2011-05-04T11:06:00.000-07:00

WWW Wednesdays:

What are you currently reading?: I've settled on "How to Read the Air" by Dinaw Miengestu. It's about Ethiopian immigrants to the United States and how they handle their displacement and the cultural divide that opens between parents and their Americanized children. A child tries to retrace his parents' odyssey.

What did you recently finish reading? I wrapped up "After the Golden Age," a superhero novel by Carrie Vaughn; "Generation A," Douglas Coupland's 2009 novel about bees, the environment and neural networking; and "The Son of Laughter," Frederick Buechner's beautiful retelling of the story of Jacob.

What do you think you’ll read next? I'm leaning toward "Skippy Dies," a 600-page novel set in Ireland, but I also might try "The Frozen Rabbi" or "Troubles," a novel about Ireland during the Civil War. I have several books out from the library, but once I'm through them I'm going to concentrate on going through the pile near my bed to see what I can read and give away.

Book review: "Generation A"

2011-05-04T10:54:00.000-07:00

Coupland, Douglas. Generation A. New York, NY: Scribner, 2009.

This near-future novel brings together five people who, after all the bees have disappeared, are stung by bees. Coupland's concerns about the environment and the age of information and the Internet arise again here in this diverting novel. Although the characters are a tad shallow, the situations he puts them in are alternately amusing and thought-provoking. One character drives a combine naked and lets another guy look at him; a woman in New Zealand tries to make an "Earth sandwich" with a girl in Spain; yet a third is a survivor of the Indian Sea tsunami who ends up selling clothing in a call center; etc. So they're not so much characters as situations, but Coupland's ability to conjure bizarre and alienating circumstances, then show how we can unite even in the face of environmental disaster and existential isolation, keep the novel engrossing. At one point, the characters gather "Decameron"-style to tell stories; one of the stories, about a man who attempts to preserve language but gets left behind in the Rapture -- annoyed me no end. Why is it wrong to defend language against the grunts of texting? I was offended.

Review: "After the Golden Age"

2011-05-04T10:49:00.000-07:00

Vaughn, Carrie. After the Golden Age. New York: Tor, 2011.

This title involves a forensic accountant whose parents happen to be superheroes -- the father remarkably strong, the mother capable of producing extreme heat. The plot is involving, but the main character -- unlike say Doctor Impossible from "Soon I Will Be Invisible," seems closer to a ChickLit heroine than an existential warrior. She does, however, through her efforts to convict her parents' mortal enemy of tax evasion, acquire some depth when she finds her true crime-fighting path and the secrets behind her parents' identity (as well as those of their superhero pals). Vaughn throws in a few good plot twists, particularly in regards to a police detective she begins to date (the mayor's son). It's short, fast and plucky, but not as deep as some other novels in the genre.

Book review: "The Son of Laughter"

2011-05-04T10:42:00.000-07:00

Buechner, Frederick. The Son of Laughter. [San Francisco]: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993.

Buechner’s beautiful novel retells in raw detail the story of Jacob – a life filled with trickery, pain and sorrow, yet illuminated by a vision of stars. The novel takes Jacob from childhood through the deceptions he and his mother perpetrate on damaged, blind father Isaac and brother Esau, as well as the tricks Jacob’s father-in-law perpetuate on him, and finally back to the desert where Jacob’s sons play the ultimate trick on their father. All these characters, whom Buechner vividly depicts, wrestle constantly with the Fear, a god they cannot see – in opposition to the idols they still worship, whose faces are cast in stone. Jacob’s life is filled with loss and pain – his struggles with his brother and his father-in-law; the loss of Rachel, first through trickery and then through death; the brutality of his sons; and the loss of Joseph, his beloved’s son. Yet Jacob holds to the promise of the Fear, whose visions sustain him. The Fear is a god of the living, in contrast to the Black Land (Egyptian) gods who govern death. Buechner intends for us to look back to this time to draw lessons for our own relationship with God, and he foreshadows the kinds of questions Jesus answered for Christians about sin, death and life with the Father. Jacob, the central character, may at times appear a cipher, but Buechner invests the breath of life into all the other characters surrounding him, particularly flawed Isaac, connman Laman and Potipher’s lustful life.

Book review: "Angelology"

2011-04-20T15:41:00.000-07:00

Trussoni, Danielle. Angelology. New York: Viking, 2010.

This sprawling fantasy is at its best when it heads back into the late 1930s and early 1940s to tell the tale of angelologists battling the Nephilim, the amoral and bloodthirsty descendants of the Watchers. The parts set in 1999 are very good, too, as the main characters -- a nun in charge of a library and a researcher -- follow clues to solve a decades-old mystery about a lost artifact. Like A Discovery of Witches, Angelology does not argue for the author's ability to weave a suspenseful tale, but the writing is straight-forward and often moving. The characters are compelling as the characters begin to discover who they really are. Anyway, it's a type of Lost Book novel (more accurately a lost thing novel), but it operates on a more literary level than The DaVinci Code and even was a NY Times Notable Book in 2010. So I recommend it.

Book review: "Ghost Light" by Joseph O'Connor

2011-04-20T15:18:00.000-07:00

O'Connor, Joseph. Ghost Light. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.

"Ghost Light" takes a sometimes indirect and distancing look at the romance between the famous Irish playwright and poet J.M. Synge and Maire O'Neill, an actress who originated the part of Pegeen in The Playboy of the Western World. The novel moves between O'Neill day of declining health and hope in London in 1952 and the days she spent in a surreptitious romance with the upper-class, Protestant, doomed Synge. We do get delightful looks at what a rehearsal at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin was like in 1907 as well as a BBC radio broadcast in 1957. O'Connor's lyrical passages often delight, especially when he's writing about sex and the Irish countryside. His portrayal of Synge, afflicted with cancer, is moving and insightful. (Plus, Yeats gets a bizarre monologue.) Still, we may get too much of London and not enough theater, and some of the characters (Synge's mother, O'Neill's grandmother) fall to stereotype. Still, the historical novel entertains and teaches about this pivotal time in the culture of Ireland.

Book review: Regeneration by Pat Barker

2011-04-20T15:11:00.000-07:00

Barker, Pat. Regeneration. New York: Plume, 1991.

The first book in Pat Barker's World War I trilogy (the others are 'The Eye in the Door'' and ''The Ghost Road'') is heavy with understatement and dialog. One of the novel's strengths is that it stands at a certain remove from the trenches of the Western Front; we learn about the horrendous living conditions and traumatic events that scar the soldiers from the perspective of Edinburgh and London, where they try to recuperate. The main character, Rivers, an anthropologist serving as a counselor to "shell-shocked" victims of post-traumatic stress disorder, is too old to fight, yet we feel he's in the trenches with his men as he probes the causes of their debilitating psychological conditions and tries to lead them out of the dark. In a vivid episode, he visits one of the men in his home country by the sea, and the trauma of a storm unlocks the soldier's inner turmoil. Lots of class consciousness and anti-war sentiment (one character is Siegfried Sassoon, a poet who opposed the war even as he sought his own return to combat) permeate the book, but the novel manages to get beneath the cant and into the heart-breaking reality of these not-particularly heroic men. I'm looking forward to the next two books.

Waiting on Wednesday: 1Q84

2011-04-20T14:57:00.000-07:00

What I'm waiting on: " I1Q84" by Haruki Murakami

So far, I've read three Murakami novels: Hard Boiled Wonderland, Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore. The novels are so haunting that you become depressed when they end, yet their endings, while always baffling, are wholly satisfying. Plus, Murakami adds a great deal of historical and descriptive detail to his works. I may read Sputnik Sweetheart in preparation for 1Q84, even though it's stunningly long (928 pages) and promises to be a reworking of George Orwell's 1984. The novel inspired Harry Potter-level fever in Japan, and it's coming out in translation Oct. 25. It may be best to read a bunch of short works before tackling this one, as it may take you the rest of the year to finish.

Waiting on Wednesday

2011-03-30T14:20:00.000-07:00

An entry for the Waiting on Wednesday meme at Books in the City:

What I'm looking forward to this year: Terry Pratchett may not be everyone's cup of tea (or the stronger stuff favored by the Wee Free Men), but nowadays any new novel is something to celebrate. Promised for October 2011 is Snuff, which seems to be a follow-up to Thud featuring Pratchett's Discworld and everyone's favorite copper, Commander Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork Watch (and the duke of Ankh-Morpork). I especially enjoy the audiobooks read by Stephen Briggs, who does a great job acting out Vimes as well as his subordinates -- human, dwarf, troll, zombie, werewolf, vampire or Nobby. Here's a description from Amazon.com:

According to the writer of the best-selling crime novel ever to have been published in the city of Ankh-Morpork, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a policeman taking a holiday would barely have had time to open his suitcase before he finds his first corpse. And Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is on holiday in the pleasant and innocent countryside, but not for him a mere body in the wardrobe. There are many, many bodies and an ancient crime more terrible than murder. He is out of his jurisdiction, out of his depth, out of bacon sandwiches, and occasionally snookered and out of his mind, but never out of guile. Where there is a crime there must be a finding, there must be a chase and there must be a punishment. They say that in the end all sins are forgiven. But not quite all... --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

WWW Wednesdays: March 30

2011-03-30T13:37:00.000-07:00

WWW Wednesdays post:

What are you currently reading: I'm splitting my time between Regeneration by Pat Barker and Ghost Light by Joseph O'Connor.

What did you recently finish reading: I wrapped up The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips, a funny metafictional narrative about the novelist, Arthur Phillips, and his relationship to Shakespeare, his father and his twin sister. The novel contains a lost Shakespeare play, The Tragedy of Arthur. But is it by Shakespeare?

What do you think you'll read next: After finishing these two relatively short novels, I may tackle The Troubles, a novel about the decolonization of Ireland by J.G. Farrell (the first of the Empire trilogy) or finish Past Imperfect by Julian Fellowes.

Book review: History of Love

2011-03-30T10:09:00.000-07:00

Krauss, Nicole. The History of Love. New York: Norton, 2005.

The literary puzzle is told from multiple viewpoints, which gives the reader many different perspectives and a lot more information than any of the characters have. It works. An aging locksmith and Holocaust survivor lives alone in Manhattan; he lost the love of his life to the exigencies of fate and admires from afar the writer-son who never knew his real father. Meanwhile, a teen-age girl who lost her father to cancer tries to reawaken her mother to life as the mother translates a favorite book, "The History of Love." Krauss ties these stories together by letting information seep out gradually (although you'll probably guess the relationships correctly). I liked the openness of the narrative -- it take the readers to three continents -- and the intimacy the author establishes as these lives are revealed. The audio book has four different narrators, which helps clarify the narrative as one listens to it in one's car.

Book review: Making Money

2011-03-30T10:05:00.000-07:00

Pratchett, Terry. Making Money: A Novel of Discworld. New York, NY: Harper, 2007.

Not as rich as "Thud" or "Going Postal," but Terry Pratchett brings neo-liberal ideas about money to his beloved Ankh-Morpork in another romp involving Moist von Lipwig, golems and the omniscient Lord Vettinari. Von Lipwig, bored by his success with the postal service, gets roped into revamping the bank, which a scandalous clan of Lavishes have battle over for years. Nobby Nobs, Sgt. Angua, Capt. Carrot, the reporter from The Truth and several other familiar characters who show up in addition to Mr. Blunt, a rigid clerk who has a deep secret. It's a lot of fun rummaging around in this world, and don't underestimate the power of a gold suit (and a top hat with a lot of gold glitter on it).

Review: Discovery of Witches

2011-03-30T10:03:00.000-07:00

Harkness, Deborah E. A Discovery of Witches. New York: Viking, 2011.

Basically, it's Twilight for grown-ups. In fact, it's a vast improvement over Twilight (although it suffers from a similar gawk-at-the-hot-vampire vibe). It has an intricate, involving plot, and many of the characters engage the reader and defy expectations -- a witch-hating vampire, for example, proves motherly to our witch heroine. I have several quibbles. For a novel that purports to be the beginning of a war among witches, vampires and daemons, "Discovery" doesn't have a lot of action. Also, her pacing is off -- Harkness has a strangely even prose style (the majority of the book is a first-person account by the heroine) that doesn't heat up when our hero, Diana, is being tortured, and attacks seem to pop out of nowhere. There is a deus-ex-machina with a real deus. And I was hoping for more historical detail about alchemy. But this novel, albeit nearly 600 pages, reads very quickly, and because it's obviously the first in the series (the second promises a lot more alchemy, and Christopher Marlowe), I'm cutting it a lot of slack. And in fact I enjoyed it. It falls both in the urban fantasy and mysterious tome genres. I actually liked the heroine quite a bit (she's a lot smarter than Bella and learns to take care of herself pretty quickly, once she learns the secret to her magic). And Harnkess deploys occasional humor. The book probably will appeal more to women, however (a vampire AND a doctor!).

Book Review: Losing Graceland

2011-03-30T09:58:00.000-07:00

Nathan, Micah. Losing Graceland: A Novel. New York: Broadway Paperbacks, 2011.

Although more of a novella than a full novel, this book takes readers on a joy ride with an old man who may be Elvis and a young, directionless college grad who can't get over breaking up with his girlfriend and an unfulfilled yearning to go do Amsterdam. Along the way, "Elvis" picks fights, takes drugs and goes through a terrifying ordeal just to find out the whereabouts of his (possible) granddaughter. Nathan writes succinctly as he weaves the narrative in and out of the main characters' consciousnesses. It's a fun, literate literary entertainment, best appreciated by those of you who have toured Graceland.

Book Review: The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips

2011-03-30T09:48:00.000-07:00

Phillips, Arthur. The Tragedy of Arthur: A Novel. New York: Random House, 2011.

This delightful metafiction narrative traces the life of novelist Arthur Phillips as he struggles with his own mercurial personality in the face of his father's incarceration for fraud and his twin sister's obsession with Shakespeare. The novel comes complete with the transcript for the play "The Tragedy of Arthur," purportedly a lost Shakespeare play now magically reappearing thanks, perhaps, to Phillips' father, also Arthur Phillips. Phillips returns to the games he started in The Egyptologist and plays off his recurring themes of artistic obsession, fraud and unrequited love. The big question looming over the whole text, the one posed by Harold Bloom, is whether we invented Shakespeare (why him and not Dekker or one of the lost Elizabethan playwrights?) or whether Shakespeare invented us. Phillips' occasionally hilarious prose (let loose through the style of a mock memoir) makes the "introduction" all the more appealing. It's up to you if you're going to read the "Shakespeare" play, but at least skim through the footnotes.

What I'm Reading Wednesdays: March 9

2011-03-09T12:03:00.000-08:00

For WWW Wednesdays:

What I'm reading now: I'm moving pretty quickly through A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness, which right now involves a mysterious manuscript, the Bodleian Library, witches and vampires (with daemons thrown in). The book is taking its time, which is fine by me, and it's obvious that it's the author's first novel, but I'm looking forward to solving the mystery of the manuscript in a library -- one of my favorite literary conceits. Meanwhile, I'm listening to The History of Love by Nicole Krauss on my MP3 player, and I'm picking at a couple of books -- Losing Graceland (more of a novella), The Tragedy of Arthur (another promising mysterious manuscript metanarrative by Arthur Phillips) and Ghost Light.

What I finished reading: I recently finished reading The Quality of Life Report by Meghan Daum and The Metropolis Case by Matthew Gallaway.

What I want to read next: Once I finish Witches, I want to read the three books mentioned above, as well as a YA SF novel called Across the Universe. Or I'll start on my list of books to read on my shelf list.

Book review: The Metropolis Case

2011-03-09T11:33:00.000-08:00

Gallaway, Matthew. 2010. The Metropolis case: a novel. New York: Crown Publishers.

Although some passages of this first novel, a work featuring four intertwined stories that take place decades or even centuries apart, are way, way over the top (approaching camp), the story about art, music and time (and some big secrets that are pretty easy to guess) keeps you reading. A lawyer named Martin and a soprano named Maria grow up in Pittsburgh; Maria confronts a budding talent in conflict with her standoffish nature, and Martin tries to play by the rules of hockey and his father despite his attraction to men. We also learn of Anna, a great Wagnerian soprano in New York, and Lucien, a budding tenor in 19th century Paris whose father's experiments hold great promise. The author's love of opera and punk rock come through in this largely lark. The characters make more sense as tools of the plot than as living beings, and the reader will figure solve the "case" about halfway through the book, but it's fun to follow along with the intersecting lives of these people, united by time and opera.

Book review: The Quality of Life Report

2011-03-09T11:28:00.000-08:00

Daum, Meghan. The Quality of Life Report. New York:Viking, 2003.

I had wanted to read this book for a long time, and I finally got a chance to listen to it through the NetLibrary audiobook download site through the Tuscaloosa Public Library. The novel ends somewhat abruptly, as if the open-ended narrative reflects the openness of the landscape and the making it up as we go along lives of the people of the Midwest as depicted in this novel. Daum takes her main character, a transplanted Easterner who sets down to report on the life in Prairie City, Midwest, down many unexpected paths; her resolute determination not to go down clichéd paths to happiness is one of the strengths of the book. Every time I was ready to give up on the book for its pat look at New Yorkers and Midwesterners, Daum throws us a curve. The book hit home for me because I made a similar exodus in 1986, leaving NYC for Columbia, Mo., for some of the same reasons. I loved the bit where she tries to explain God to her boyfriend's daughter. By turns acerbically funny and mildly absurd (and sad), the novel is a lot of fun.

Borders and book stores

2011-02-16T09:17:00.000-08:00

Intertwined in my memories of reading are my visits to libraries and book stores. My first library, I believe, was the old Garden City Public Library, which was in a converted municipal building near the train station -- I believe it stood in what is now the parking lot for the new library, which went up in the 1970s. I remember it being yellow and somewhat odd-shaped. I went there with my mother, but I don't know how often we went. (I remember going to the new library a lot, particularly to check out books on plays.)

The first bookstore I remember was the Doubleday outlet, which was on Franklin Avenue (perhaps across from A&S), just a few blocks from the library. A Google search suggests that a Doubleday book store still stands on Franklin Avenue, but I have no idea what chain owns it. Doubleday used to have its plant in Garden City, so it was natural for a bookstore to be there. I remember buying the new Theatre Worlds there with birthday money during my teen years as well as the Definitive Biography of PDQ Bach (a very exciting purchase indeed). When I was older, my father took me to that great den of remaindered literature, the Barnes and Noble on lower Fifth Avenue, and to the Strand, with its miles of used and review books. After college, for one summer I worked in a bookstore -- Applause Theatre Books, which used to be on 71st Street and Broadway. Other than being robbed one Sunday afternoon, I had a lot of fun commingling among the plays and books on the stage before trotting off to journalism school in Missouri and the rest of my life.

I don't remember visiting independent bookstores at all during my formative years, but I did like one that was in the Westport section of Kansas City and another in Gainesville near the University of Florida. (I remember buying Hard Boiled Wonderland and The Remains of the Day at the Gainesville bookstore.) The old Tower Books in the Tower district of Sacramento had the feel of an independent bookstore although it was part of a chain. Now, an independent bookstore occupies the same building, I believe.

But I admit I have a fondness for over-the-top chains, particularly Media Play, where you could shop for CDs, videos and computer games along with books, and Borders, which had its fine display of new fiction and a lively range of titles throughout the store. I preferred Borders to Barnes and Noble, because the Borders I started going to (on Metcalf Avenue in Overland Park, Kansas) had a friendlier staff, and the layout seemed more open to browsing. Before Amazon.com and the Internet, I actually would discover new titles there I hadn't known about -- a book by someone I knew in college, or a professor at KU. (One such title was The Planets by James Boylan, someone I had gone to college with but had not known; I just saw it on the shelf, recognized the name, and bought it. I had had a similar experience in the 1980s when I was walking by the window of a Fifth Avenue bookstore--I think it was Simon and Schuster. I saw As Soon as it Rains by Kayle Jones (another person I knew of in college without actually knowing), and I went in and bought it on the spot.) We moved to Reno in 1996, and a year or two later, a Borders opened up, and I spent occasional weekends haunting the shelves. On one Saturday afternoon, I walked by the new titles shelf and saw John Lithgow browsing; he must have been staying up at Tahoe and had come down to buy something. I also liked going to the Borders in downtown Davis, when I used to take a long walk through the University of California, Davis campus and the downtown area. No Borders stores are in Alabama, but I've been visiting the ones around Atlanta with my dad when we visit him.

Anyway, it looks like Borders is one step away from closing, and that's too bad. I love Amazon, and I like independent bookstores (when I can find them), but I still remember the thrill of discovery when I came across a book I hadn't heard of, sitting on a shelf, waiting to be perused.

What I'm Reading Wednesdays

2011-02-16T07:55:00.000-08:00

This blog is in response to the WWW Wednesday's blog:

What have I finished: I made it through the hammocks and theme-parks of Swamplandia! by Karen Russell. Here's my review.

What I'm reading now: I finally got my MP3 player sorted out, so I'm listening to The Quality of Life Report again. Meanwhile, I'm reading The Metropolis Case by Matthew Gallaway (a library book) and I started The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz.

What I plan to read next: I may read a history book (short) about Bartolome Las Casas, then get started on The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer and Destiny and Desire by Carlos Fuentes.

Teaser Tuesdays

2011-02-15T14:17:00.000-08:00

This is for the Teaser Tuesday blog meme.

From The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, page 267:

Dru sleeps during the day, and when he wakes in the afternoon he waits with impatience for night to fall. He sits in his room in a low chair, watching through the window the outlines of the bald branches of the garden; he contemplates the white walls of the room and their pictures of a glorious distant planet, which appears to be living through the later years of a golden age (there are obvious indications of imminent decline).

Czechs and balances

2011-02-15T14:10:00.000-08:00

Here's a query for all you literary types out there: If you're reading a novel that someone translated from the Czech, and you find sentences that don't make sense or are difficult, does that mean the Czech doesn't make sense or is difficult, or does it mean that the translator is making it difficult? Here's a sentence from the first page of The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz:

"It seemed to me more agreeable and more considerate to this place to accord it the fate of other landscapes I passed through, simply to look on contentedly as its contours gradually dissolved in a haze created by a mix of memory, forgetting, and dream, a radiant mist which softens shapes, leaving phantoms of sense to wander among them, and soaks them with the breath of a conciliation which perhaps has its basis in fallacy and the long useless."

First off, it should be that, not which. (Is this a difference between British and American grammar?) The first part of the sentence is OK, but "phantoms of sense":? Breath of conciliation? (Does conciliation breathe?) And what really brought me up short -- "fallacy and the long useless." Long, useless what? Does it really read like this in Czech? Your guess is as good as mine, but this book is going to be tough reading, especially if the translator keeps using "which" when he means "that." I bought the book on the basis of a review at Three Percent, a blog dedicated to literature in translation. Anyway, we shall see.

It's Monday -- What I am Reading 2/14

2011-02-14T10:46:00.000-08:00

For the Monday What Are You Reading blog.

It's Valentine's Day, but I'm waiting for the Feb. 15 discounts to buy gifts and such.

I finally finished reading Swamplandia by Karen Russell. Here's the review.

What I'm reading now: I've been listening to The Quality of Life Report by Megan Daum, but it's hard to listen to in the car, because the main character keeps making these ghastly choices, and since it's first-person, she knows full well in "hindsight" how things went bad. Anyway, I was having trouble keeping the license current on my MP3 player (it's downloaded from NetLibrary), but I think I'll get back to it this week.

Meanwhile, I'm reading-reading The Metropolis Case by Matthew Gallaway, which takes place in 2001, 1960, 1976 and sometime in the 19th century, and it all involves Tristram and Isolde in some way, and I'm beginning to enjoy it, although a couple of the characters seem undernourished, as we're constrained by the narrative format from lingering too long or getting too focused on many characters, particularly the opera singer who nearly gets hit by a bus (supernatural, or all in her head?).

Review: Swamplandia!

2011-02-14T10:33:00.000-08:00

Russell, Karen. Swamplandia! New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011.

This novel (which I read as part of the Amazon Vine program) has some wild changes of tone, from one of beautiful, detailed description of a swamp to funny comments and outright satire. A family that runs a alligator-wrestling attraction in a southern Florida swamp falls apart after the death of the mother, a certified star swimmer-wrestler. The narrative alternates between the first-person account of Ava, the youngest child, as she confronts the desertion first of her brother, then her father, and finally her sister (entranced by the ghosts she finds in the swamp) and the brother's satiric foray into a hellish (literally) theme park on the mainland that's half Doug Coupland and half George Saunders. Russell allows her voices to veer from the satiric and hilarious to the extremely detailed description of the flora, fauna and moods of the swamp, and an air of menace hangs over the proceedings (how will these children survive)? But it's a great story of children becoming adults and evolving to fit into a new world after years of isolation in Swamplandia!

ID Win

2011-02-02T14:21:00.000-08:00

I don't remember why, but last night I re-watched the Old Negro Space Program satire. The short spoofs PBS-style documentaries on African-American history, here postulating that there was a "Negro" space program in the 1960s that used buses and old cars. Anyway, I thought I recognized the actor playing one of the former astronauts -- Wallace "Suitcase" Jefferson. He reminded me of a 1970s comedian who appeared on "Laugh-In" and a number of other shows; he was one of those recognizable supporting-player types. I thought his name was Johnnie Whitaker or Johnny Walker -- neither, of course, were corrects. But after some searching in IMDB, I realized that he was Johnny Brown, who did in fact appear on "Laugh-In" and many other shows. He apparently was on "Good Times," too. You're supposed to be less able to recognize faces as you get older, so maybe I'm not old enough.

WWW Wednesdays

2011-02-02T09:07:00.000-08:00

In response to the WWW Wednesdays thread at Should Be Reading:

What I'm reading now: Swamplandia! by Karen Russell. I'm about a third of the way through. So far, it's moving between a coming-of-age story about a girl growing up on an alligator farm-tourist trap and her brother's descent into a high-tech devilish theme park. I'm not sure the tones are compatible, but the novel has unexpected moments of humor. I'm also listening to The Quality of Life Report by Meghan Daum because I could check it out through the Tuscaloosa Public Library's NetLibrary audiobook service.

What I recently finished: I finally finished listening to The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud after starting to listen to it last year (I was foiled by procrastination and technical problems). I also finished Heidegger's Glasses by Thaisa Frank, a probing look at surviving unspeakable situations and something of a satire on the Third Reich.

What I'm planning to read next: I suppose I want to start God's Almost Chosen Peoples, a history of religion during the Civil War, but I think I'll instead read either Our Tragic Universe by Scarlett Thomas or The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer.

Book review: The Emperor's Children

2011-01-31T18:34:00.000-08:00

Messud, Claire. The Emperor's Children. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.

Half way through this title. I was convinced I didn't like it. The characters were all New Yorkers deciding to do bad or stupid things, particularly Booty, who seemed self-destructive in particular. Midway through the book, Booty, a 19-year-old college dropout come to work with his famous uncle in NYC, makes a horrendously bad decision that just drove me nuts (not unlike me in the 1980s in New York). The Thwaits I didn't care for in particular; the patriarch, Murray, whom we're not supposed to like, is a shallow shell of a character, a journalist of important things who is loved and respected despite his endless compromises. (Maybe it was the narration, but reminded me of a theater professor I had in the 1980s.) His drifting daughter, Marina, falls for an annoying Australian named Ludo who seems hell-bent to bring Murray down, like Ahab and that whole whale thing. Plus, the whole thing takes place before 9/11, so you keep wondering who's going to die. And the omniscient narrator goes on and on about each character's motives and thoughts, to the point you wish we could just get on with it. But by the end, I was won over, partially, because of a couple of key plot twists, and one of the main characters, Danielle, reminds me of an old girlfriend. And the third-person-focused narrative structure, which shifts from character to character, helps build suspense and dramatic irony (you sometimes know more than the character in the spotlight, but you're also left wondering what the other characters know and aren't saying). Anyway, I finished it. It made me feel as if I were still in New York, even as I drove around Tuscaloosa listening to it on my MP3 player.

It's Monday -- What I am Reading

2011-01-31T09:31:00.000-08:00

This is in response to the It's Monday -- What Are You Reading at Book Journey:

What I've read: Links to my reviews for:

Heidegger's Glasses by Thaisa Frank

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu

I didn't read as much as I thought I would this weekend; for example, I thought I'd finally finish Super Sad True Love Story, but I didn't. Instead, I decided to concentrate on Swamplandia! by Karen Russell, which is a somewhat slower read (you need to read some of the similes a couple of times) but utterly fascinating -- a teenage girl on a dying alligator farm in Lake Okeechobee watches her sister fall apart and her brother defect its rival, World of Darkness (a theme park of speakable evil). I'm reading this for Amazon Vine. What's interesting is that I read Russell's book of short stories, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, and I thought some of the stories displayed a mannered hopelessness. But this book is full of rich details and amusing sentences.

Meanwhile, I'm finishing The Emperor's Children on my MP3 player -- it's an e-audiobook download from NetLibrary. I'm really divided on this title, and I'll write a review later in the week. I had started listening to it last year, but my checkout expired, and I couldn't get it to reload until I got a new laptop.

Review: Heidegger's Glasses

2011-01-28T08:12:00.000-08:00

Frank, Thaisa. Heidegger's Glasses: A Novel. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2010.

Although I had some difficult finding my way into the story at first (I started reading this book last year and picked it up again this week), by the end I was hooked. A group of translators, rescued by the Nazis during the Holocaust, live in a mine and answer letters to the dead to appease occult-minded SS leaders. Into this improbable but telling story walks Elie, a "fixer" of obscure origins who manipulates the authorities to save the translators, here called Scribes, and Martin Heidegger, who seeks an answer and some glasses from his optometrist, who has been shipped to Auschwitz. The wide-ranging though rather brief story, plays on human emotions when confronted with unspeakable horror and nearly perverse absurdity.

WWW Wednesdays

2011-01-25T19:08:00.000-08:00

Because blogs are the definition of overkill, I'm going to give a reading update for the WWW Wednesdays at Should be Reading, one of the blogs I follow. Since I'm not taking graduate classes, I seem to be reading more. Anyway:

Recently finished: How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional University by Charles Yu (review here)

What I'm reading now: I'm actually dividing my time between Heidegger's Glasses by Thaisa Frank, a book I started last year but did not finish, and Swamplandia by Karen Russell. I received Swamplandia! through the Amazon Vine program. Meanwhile, in my car I'm listening to The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud, a download from the NetLibrary audiobook collection through my local library. It's another book I started last year but did not finish because of technical issues, which seem to have resolved themselves.

What I think I'll read next: I want to finish Super Sad True Love Story before I have to take it back to the library; then I have a few more library books to read, including Losing Graceland by Micah Nathan, The Radleys by Matt Haig and Certain Women by Madeline L'Engle.

Teaser Tuesdays

2011-01-25T00:01:00.000-08:00

My Teaser Tuesday entry. From Swamplandia! by Karen Russell, page 130:

"I swam as smoothly as I could for the edge of the Pit. My palms scooped through little nets of algae and something thicker."

Review: How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

2011-01-24T14:03:00.000-08:00

Yu,Charles. How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. New York: Pantheon, 2010.

Charles Yu concocts a funny and sad metafictional diversion that explores the meaning of time and memory. Like Mark Leyner, Yu is his own protagonist; he's a time-machine technician who lives in a device that allows him to float above and around time; in nine years of his body clock, he's advanced maybe a week in his own particular universe (31). Yu lays on the science-fictional contortions and time-travel twists (as in Hitchhiker's Guide, time travel is a matter of grammar, with the rub that you can't change anything) as Yu confronts his past and himself along with his faithful though unreal dog, Ed, and TAMMY, a well-meaning Microsoft interface. Is this an SF novel? In the broadest sense, yes, but it has more to do with Derrida (time is a text that you create and read at the same time) than Tim Powers or Jack Finney.

Fulfills: 2011 Support Your Library Challenge

It's Monday -- What I am Reading

2011-01-24T07:52:00.000-08:00

The Monday reading summary challenge: I'm glad I'm finally accumulating titles to add to this challenge. I find that at different times of the year, I fall into a rhythm where I do a lot more reading than others. Usually it relates to whether I'm feeling a lot of stress because of work or school (and I'm done with my master's now, so I have one fewer excuse). But anyway --

Reviews of what I finished this week:

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco (audiobook).

Mr. Toppit by Charles Elton (Amazon Vine, New Author Challenge)

The Sherlockian by Graham Moore (A mixture of literary mystery and historical fiction; Library challenge)

What I'm reading now:

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu: This book is a mix of literary fiction and SF; a character named Charles Yu inhabits a time machine at a time when time machines are common; he slips into an infinite loop that involves his unresolved feelings about his parents. Part SF spoof (allusions to Time and Again and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), part exploration of a dysfunctional family, the relatively brief novel is absorbing. I ready his short story collection, Third Class Superhero, last year, and I liked most of the stories.

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell -- I got this off the Amazon Vine program, and I'll read it after I finish Safely. I've read the first 60 pages or so, and so far it's quite compelling. Besides, I like fiction about Florida.

Books that came to my attention:

With the deaths of Wilfrid Sheed and Reynolds Price, I found a few titles that I'd like to catch up on. I bought Price's The Good Priest's Son a year or two ago and want to read it this year. Meanwhile, Sheed's Max Jamison sounds fun.

Book award nominations:

Of the fiction nominees for the National Book Critics Circle award, I read A Visit From the Goon Squad (a really good novel made up of interlocking short stories) and own Freedom (on my list to read this year). Skippy Dies, To the End of the Land and Comedy in a Minor Key are all titles I'd read about last year and would like to read in the future. What's interesting is that it's a completely different list from the National Book Awards (I think this probably happens often), which produced a list of novels I really have no interest in reading, except maybe for Hotel. Likewise, I really didn't want to read the 2010 Pulitzer Prize novel, either.

Book Review: Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana

2011-01-21T07:47:00.000-08:00

Eco, Umberto. The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt, 2005.

This novel is more of a summary of the imaginative life of an Italian intellectual born in 1931 with a plot-framing device than a novel, but it has wonderful scenes nonetheless, and its overarching exploration of what it means to be conscious and to have memory is directly in line with Eco's other meta-narratives. A rare-book dealer awakes from a stroke to find he has nearly perfect verbal memory but remembers nothing of his own life or his own emotions. There follows a process where he has to reacquaint himself with his wife, his children and grandchildren, his employee, his friends and even the northern Italian city in which he lives. Finally, he returns to his grandfather's estate to go through the physical remains of his boyhood, including the comic books he read and his own writings. The story's outcome is not what you'd expect from a romance or inspirational novel (spoiler alert -- it takes a dark but brilliant turn), and if you weren't born in Italy in 1931, a lot of the cultural references won't resonate. But the book offers a fine window into what it meant to be a boy grown up under fascism and how our cultural inputs shape our own stories and our memories.

Book review: Mr. Toppit

2011-01-20T05:12:00.000-08:00

Elton, Charles. Mr. Toppit. New York: Other Press, 2010.

This book plays off the legendary antipathy real-life sons of authors who use them in children's fiction to weave an improbable but engaging tale of wild success and painful loss. Luke Hayward's father wrote a series of books about a boy named Luke Hayseed, and when his father is mortally wounded by a truck, it touches off a chain of events that catapults the Haywards and an American named Laurie into an unwanted fame shadowed by past tragedies. The narrative travels back and forth in time, and the plots and mysteries keep the reader interested despite the passive main character. And who is Mr. Toppit anyway? You don't want him to show up.

New Orleans

2011-01-18T15:50:00.000-08:00

We stuck to the tourist areas of New Orleans on our second trip there. We even took a river cruise to the Battle of New Orleans site (and I didn't realize we knew where it took place). I did walk north of our hotel on St. Charles Avenue, however, and I found once I passed a dairy and a block of homes (some more run down than others) a closed Catholic church and a mission with an encampment of homeless people next door in a vacant lot. I contrasted that scene with the beautiful homes across the street from St. Charles Avenue Presbyterian Church (Hannah's in love with the neighborhood) and the rag-tag prosperity of the toursity French Quarter. But our most enjoyable finds this trip were the shops and restaurants along Magazine Street in the Garden District -- particularly the crowded hipster hang-outs we drove by around noon on Sunday. Olivia, the last kid we have in our church's Chapel Choir, sang with the group up in the loft on Sunday morning, and they sounded very sweet. We rounded out the day at the World War II Museum, which is still heavy on D-Day displays but a lot more balanced than I thought it was going to be. But I enjoyed vacationing with the entire family (we sprang Rachel from the Alabama School of Math and Science) as well as our walks through the city.

Teaser Tuesdays

2011-01-18T15:35:00.000-08:00

Here's my entry for Teaser Tuesday:

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu, page 198:

Tammy's crying again. "Well, that was a bummer," I say.