Steve
Russillo's Maundering Mess
est. 1997
Celebrating a quarter-century of not making the world a better place at all,
but yakking aimlessly and endlessly about things that are important to me.
Which—from my perspective—does indeed make the world a better
place, come to think of it.
Email
Twitter/IG: @RussilloSM
(modified 27JUN23)
* ALSO: Any straight link
to a YouTube page from this old-skool webpage frame won't work anymore
|
* 2023* (reverse
chrono: most recent first)
* 2022* (reverse chrono: most recent first)
* 2021* (reverse chrono: most recent first)
Feb 14, 2023. OK GETTING WARMER. I found myself embarking on yet another Private Joke search mission, during which I encountered many flying pig images, in the midst of which was this image on facebook, and also this link to someone named Julian Butler's wikipedia page. Mr Butler has several musical irons in various fires, one of which appears to be Private Joke. Butler's wiki mentions a Private Joke album called Honour Among Thieves, but when you visit the album's Apple Music page you can see "We Belong Together" in the track list, but not "Travel Through Time," go figure. (Butler's spotify link.)
June 26, 2023. INSTANT, DEFINITIVE ANSWERS FROM THE MOST RELIABLE OF SOURCES! Stephen Butler stumbled across this site and graciously emailed me to say: Private Joke is an English band which was formed in 1991 by he and his brother Julian. Members have come and gone through the years but the brothers remain the central operating core. THANK YOU STEPHEN!
(And if you missed the video for “We Belong Together,” get thee to the internet posthaste and check out this cool silhouette animation!)
* 2020* (reverse chrono: most recent first)
[8OCT20: As I mention
much, MUCH farther down, it's been 14 months since I updated this page. I only
mention that to explain that yes, I'm aware of the gap, and, also farther down,
attempt to explain
it. Sort of.]
* 2019* (reverse chrono: most recent first)
* 2018* (reverse chrono: most recent first)
* 2017* (recent first: Dec - Jan)
* 2016* (recent first: Dec - Jan)
(*The show's original run was 2006-09 on different networks, but
the info screen on Crackle says this episode was the first of season 3.
Curiously, the show's wikipedia page makes no mention at all of season 3 and
its only link to Crackle has no reciprocal mention of the show. No less bizarre
than anything else about this band and/or show and/or network I suppose.)
* 2015* (recent first: Dec - Jan)
* 2014* (recent first: Dec - Jan)
* 2013* (recent first: Dec - Jan)
I.D. video version |
I.D. Live version |
I.D. Unplugged version
| Lindsay Stirling & Pentatonix's phenomenal cello + beatbox cover version.
* 2012* (recent first: Dec - Jan)
* 2011* (recent first: Dec - Jan)
* 2010* (recent first: Dec - Jan)
Other Favorite
Songs
2009-2007 | 2006-2004 | 2003-2001 | 2000 | 1999 | 1998 | 1997
09SEP13. What are
the odds? I've had V. on my shelf for YEARS (ever since devouring Gravity's
Rainbow.) I'd pick it up occasionally, flip through it, replace it on the
shelf. This weekend my 20-year-old daughter asked me about it (her n...
tagged:
currently-reading
16JAN11. It won't
arrive until the middle of the week. But when it does I'll dive right in. Going
through the 3rd edition of How To Reassess Your Chess was an INVALUABLE
experience. It opened my eyes to aspects of the game to which I pre...
tagged:
chess-books and currently-reading
The more Hitchens
I read, the sadder I am that he's gone...so many things he could have weighed
in on! Don't get me wrong, he was wonderfully prolific; one could spend months
reading his work (I have and will). I try to form my opinions...
tagged:
currently-reading and lifetime-favorites
Reading (as of: 29DEC17) |
|||
Current Reading |
---> |
---> |
On
The Worrisome Trend Of Reading Not Just Fewer But Far Fewer Books. I'm less likely to
comment on a book these days— |
Steve
Katz |
Someone
recommended this three or four years ago—I immediately loved the
title—but I only pulled it off the shelf a couple months back. This has
lead to protracted dalliances with The
Exagggerations of Peter Prince ("ggg" sic, of course), 43 Fictions
(which qualifies as a Steve Katz "reader," if you will), and
Raymond Federman's Double or
Nothing. Exagggerations and Double or Nothing both play
around with typography in a big way, reminding me very much of Mark
Danielewski's entrancing House of Leaves.
|
||
Thomas
Pynchon |
Started
it in Sept. 2013. By early Nov. I'd gotten about 1/3 through and was
thoroughly enjoying it. Then life interrupted and other (often lighter) fare
won my attention—but what isn't lighter than friggin'
Pynchon??—but I refuse to put this back on the shelf. |
||
Thomas
McGuane |
This
is a sort of trippy Confederacy Of Dunces kind of story. Quite a bit
darker, a little less slapstick, far more erudite, no doubt. (I can
never articulate why Kerouac's On The Road continues to leave me flat,
but I think I was probably hoping that it was more like The Bushwhacked
Piano.) |
||
Recent |
|||
Ready
Player One |
Ernest
Cline |
Wow,
wow, and WOW. It's been a long time since a book did to me what this book has
done to me: walked me through almost every human emotion. Peppered with what
seems like one or two pop-culture references on each page (some glaring and
cheesy; some subtle and sly). I can't recommend this story enough, nor can I
wait for the movie in 2018. (Last week of Dec 2017) |
|
The
Queen's Gambit |
Walter
Tevis |
My
3rd full trip though this gem, one of my all-time favorites. (mid-Dec
2017) |
|
The
Demon in The Freezer |
Richard
Preston |
Lo
and behold! I finally read a book to completion! This one is about the
dilemma faced by people in charge of "archived" viruses like
smallpox...they're killers and we could render them extinct, but if we do
THAT and it turns out some terrorist got a hold of some of the virus? There's
no way for the good guys to make vaccines if the bad guys attack. (Oct-Nov
2016) |
|
The
Cobweb |
Neal
Stephenson and J. Frederick
George |
With
all the detailed discussion of Saddam Hussein and the depth thereof, it's
hard to believe this book was written five years before the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks. (24SEP16. Finished this in early Aug. 2015, as
the header date of 7/29/15 would attest. Having averaged six to ten books a
year from say, 1995 to, say again, late 2012, this is one of the few novels
I've read to completion. See above for discussion of this phenomenon which
has distressed me since I noticed it happening.) |
|
Christopher
Hitchens |
Always'd
known he was a dynamic and engaging lecturer and a relentless and (it must be
said) brutal debater, and yet it took the man f***ing DYING to get me
off my dead ass and actually READ his words. For enduring shame, as this
collection has in a very short time earned a spot on my list of lifetime
favorites. There's no evidence that any of the 107 essays in this book were first
drafts—quite the contrary—but more than one reliable source (Was
it Salman Rushdie? His VF editor Graydon Carter?) tells of Hitch meeting a
deadline with a thousand-word first draft, and if even the weakest piece here
(IMHO, "The You Decade," p739) was created thusly it would be
borderline miraculous.(I should just leave this, Hitch-22
and God
Is Not Great here in the Currently Reading section since I dip into
all three regularly. |
||
Misquoting
Jesus |
Bart
Ehrman |
If
God could perform the miracle of inspring the words of the Bible, why on
earth couldn't he have performed the seemingly EASIER miracle of preserving
them? Some facts to consider: |
|
Interface |
Stephen
Bury (aka Neal Stephenson) and J. Frederick George |
Stephenson's
first book after his out-of-nowhere success with Snow Crash.
J. Frederick George (aka George Jewsbury) is Stephenson's uncle, a distinguished
historian; I'd love to know exactly how uncle and nephew collaborated, what
their process was like, and how much of this is Stephenson and how much is
George. (My uneducated guess would be that it's at least 70% Stephenson since
it's a novel and George doesn't write novels. Also, it largely reads like
Stephenson's other early work. In fact it makes me wonder if Stephenson wrote
it himself, but got so many ideas and so much help from his uncle that he
went ahead and gave him a writing credit. Again, just a surmise based on a
veneer of circumstatial evidence.) |
|
Gold
Bug Variations |
Richard
Powers |
The
long awaited reread? Could it finally happen? (29NOV12. Indeed it did!) |
|
Rendezvous
With Rama |
Arthur
C. Clarke |
Love
it. An extremely plausible-feeling description of a starship—and human
reaction thereto—that arrives on earth's doorstep one day |
|
Reamde |
Neal
Stephenson |
I'm
going to read this monster AND teach two classes I've never taught before
this school year? (AND read The Recognitions!) I'm about 400 pages
into Reamde so, I am clearly finding far more time for it than I
should given my new work load!! |
|
Finding
Serenity |
Edited
by Jane Espenson |
I've
been on an all-emcompassing Firefly kick since mid-March [So this
was written sometime after March, 2012, when I was introduced to Firefly.
-Ed.] (going back to watch all things Joss Whedon, whom I didnt really
know existed. Now it's Buffy reruns, Angel, Dollhouse
(holy CRAP, Dollhouse!), Cabin In The Woods, The Avengers,
Much Ado About Nothing (whenever THAT comes out...). Although I have
to say, with The Avengers having done as well as it did, Whedon can
pick and choose his projects. (I love the fact that back in 2005 he
said he wouldn't attempt an Avengers movie!) |
|
The
Hunger Games |
Suzanne
Collins |
This
goes into my "You Can Only Hear Everyone Rave About A Book So Long
Before You Cave And Take A Look Yourself" category. I enjoyed it quite a
bit, with only a few reservations. (I have the same feeling after reading
this that I had after I read Twilight: Glad I read it, didn't at all
feel like I was wasting my time, but no real desire to read the sequels.) |
|
The
Book of Drugs |
Mike
Doughty |
After
a foreword wherein MD states "I'm terrified of a common scenario:
Memoirist is dogged, exposed, denounced," he then proceeds to sling so
much sh!t at his former bandmates—true or not, and I'm leaning toward
probably true—that there's no way I can take the declaration of terror
seriously. And I'm only 1/3 the way though the book. As I read this I often
wonder how Soul Coughing survived long enough to release more than one album. |
|
The
Disappearing Spoon |
Sam
Kean |
VERY
entertaining stories from the Periodic Table! The weird way certain elements
were discovered, the weird way certain elements are used, the weird ways
certain scientists (and non-scientists!) behave(d) in the presence of certain
elements. (The title comes from element 31, gallium, a metal who's melting
point is higher than room temperature but well below that of hot
coffee....think of a practical joke you could play with a gallium spoon.... ) |
|
Into
Thin Air |
Jon
Krakauer |
14JUL11. My second time
through this (on audio this time) and it was just as gripping as the first
"dead tree" reading...see comments below. Beck
Weathers's story still made me weep with joy, and Ian Woodhall's story still
made me shout with rage. |
|
A
Naked Singularity |
Sergio
De La Pava |
Took
me less than 18 moonths to grant A Naked Singularity the reread it's
been screaming for since I finished the initial read. (See below. After two
readings and continued scrutinizing, remains in my top five favorite novels
of all time.) |
|
A
Drinking Life |
Pete
Hamill |
(Audio)
Not as much about drinking as one might expect, given the title, but an
engaging autobio nonetheless. I'm particularly interested in Hamill's career
arc from wanting to be a cartoonist as a kid to becoming the well-known
journalist. And I also like the way he frequently refers to the multiple
versions of himself; the cartoonist, the boyfriend, the street fighter, the
dutiful son of the Irish alcoholic, juggling these personas day in and day
out (as we all must and do). |
|
A
Study in Scarlet |
Arthur
Conan Doyle |
It
took the Guy Ritchie movie to nudge me towards the original Sherlock Holmes,
but here I am at long last, wishing I'd got here sooner. POST-READ:
FANTASTIC! As with Moby Dick and many other famously classic novels, you hear
so much and wonder, then you take the time and do the work and it's no wonder
at ALL why people are reading these works hundreds of years later! |
|
Zodiac |
Neal
Stephenson |
25DEC10. This book was a lot
of fun! I read it right after The Big U, Stephenson's first novel; Zodiac
is less silly than The Big U but still playful, if that makes any
sense. Apropos of nothing...In each Stephenson novel there seems to be a
primary character whose personality drives the fun in the book...call it the
Imp of the Perverse. :-) In The Big U it was Casimir and/or Fred. In Zodiac
it is mostly Sangamon and I'd have to say Bart as well. In Snow Crash
it's both YT and Hiro, in Cryptonomicon it's Randy and Amy (and surely
Sgt. Shaftoe, in the WWII sections) and in The Baroque Cycle it's
Daniel and of course Jack--the original Imp himself--and definitely Eliza. (Anathem
was the only Stephenson novel that I didn't detect the Imp, although I
wouldn't argue if you said Fra Orolo had a little of the Imp in him! There's
quite a bit of the Imp in Diamond Age's Bud, but of course ol' Bud
couldn't rein it in, so...) |
|
The
Big U |
Neal
Stephenson |
Just
finished the Go Big Red Fan prologue, and I think I can see why Stephenson
sort of disowns The Big U. It's his first novel, published in 1984
when Stephenson was 24 or thereabouts, which means it was written when he was
22-23, if not younger. But just because Stephenson wouldn't consider writing
something like The Big U in his forties doesn't mean he shouldn't have
written it in his twenties. I'm only eight pages in but I think this book
will be a lot of fun for the same reason another author-dissed first novel, The Broom Of The System is a lot of fun: it was written
by a young guy feeling his oats, and that sense of play is irresistible to
me. |
|
The
Baroque Cycle Vol. II: The Confusion |
Neal
Stephenson |
Volume
II consists of Book 4 (The Bonanza) & Book 5 (The Juncto)
which are set during the same period and whose chapters have been interleaved
(con-fused) to preserve chronology. |
|
Faster |
James
Gleick |
The
luscious, WICKED irony of checking out a book about how peoples' lives are
being lived ever faster* and only being able to find an abridged version. |
|
The
Greatest Show On Earth |
Richard
Dawkins |
Dawkins
has written many books on the effects and results of evolution, assuming he could
convince staunch history-deniers of evolution's value. Here, he does
something others have done but that he has not...maps out exactly why
evolution should be regarded as fact. Dawkins explains exactly what it is we
observe that leads us to conclude, beyond any doubt at all, that complex life
on this planet is descended from simpler, older forms; That, unquestionably,
all life on earth is related; We humans are not only cousins to other
primates such as monkeys and apes, but cousins—albeit far more distant
cousins—to plants, to even bacteria, even fungi, even viruses:
all of it. |
|
The
Passage |
Justin
Cronin |
A
ten pound novel as a gift for Father's Day... about vampires: perhaps
the ballsiest gift call my wife has ever made, and whaddaya know, I friggin
LOVED it. |
|
Running
With Scissors |
Augusten
Burroughs |
One
of the very few books I've started sight unseen; it was a buck at a yard
sale, had some nice blurbs from trusted sources, AND it's a memoir (which
genre I know I'm not supposed to like but Lord help me I do) so boom.
Devoured the first sixty pages in one sitting, laughing loudly and often. |
|
A
Naked Singularity |
Sergio
De La Pava |
10JAN10. Well! January isn't
even half over and I think I've already found my favorite book of 2010. I'm
precisely 1/6 the way through A Naked Singularity and it has shoved
all my other reading to the back burner. I'm having as much fun reading this
as I had reading Infinte Jest, and/or Gold Bug Variations,
and/or The Lost Scrapbook*. An assload of fun, in other words. (*De La
Pava's novel reminds me of Dara's in another way. It's self-published and
out-of-nowhere and surprisingly, astronomically good despite. I can't
believe it's De La Pava's first novel, and it kills me how hard he will have
to work to get a wider audience for it, if he's even able to do that at all.)
|
|
War
Dances |
Sherman
Alexie |
I'd
heard of Alexie but never read anything by him until his piece "War
Dances" in the New Yorker this summer. It's the title piece in this
collection (duh-hoy) and easily the most memorable, although "Breaking
and Entering" is up there too. The collection features six or seven
short stories, each separated by three smaller things like poems, or Q&A
pieces. |
|
A
Life Decoded |
J.
Craig Venter |
This
generation's The Double Helix. The story of a huge scientific discovery,
complete with all the scheming and backstabbing. Unlike James Watson's 1968
memoir, A Life Decoded is also its author's full autobiography. |
|
Wobegon
Boy |
Garrison
Keillor |
I
could listen to this guy read biscuit recipes. His own novel though? Not too
bad! (That pissy office "apology" had me HOWLING with laughter as I
listened to the audiobook in the car!) |
|
On
The Road |
Jack
Kerouac |
I
took a shot at this maybe ten years ago and got perhaps halfway though it
before I stopped caring. Took another shot maybe five years ago and didn't
get as far. Now I have it on audio and we'll see how far we go... [Finished
it , but never really cared. A year after reading and all I can remember
is, he met a mexican girl, and ended up in Mexico, somehow, for some length
of time.] |
|
The
Man Who Loved China |
Simon
Winchester |
On
audio: The story of Joseph
Needham, author of the seminal Science And Technology In China
series. |
|
Pnin |
Vladimir
Nabokov |
A
delicious little character study from history's greatest ESL student.
Heartrending and heartwarming. |
|
1776 |
David
McCullough |
Audiobook:
I cannot get over how good this guy is. And ever since Ken Burn's The
Civil War I much prefer to hear McCullough reading his own words. (I'm
trying to lose some weight, walking 90 minutes a day. Audiobooks make the
time pass pleasantly, but listening to McCullough makes the time all but
evaporate.) Mid-August, 2009 Loved this! Like most Americans I got the overview
of the revolution and most of the headlines in grade school, but just in the
barest outline, enough to leave a bolus of unconnected images in my memory.
For instance I had no CLUE.... |
|
Sweet
and Vicious |
David
Schickler |
From
the man who brought you Kissing In Manhattan. A
tasty slice of midwestern lovers-on-the-run romance. Reminds me of Denis
Johnson's "Angels" (though I read THAT so long ago I could be way
off base with that impression) and Bonnie and Clyde. |
|
God
Is Not Great |
Christopher
Hitchens |
I'm
almost positive I would never read this had I not found a copy of the
audiobook at the library; I can listen to Hitchens more easily than I can
read him, strangely. (On philosophical subjects, Richard Dawkins can be
strident of course, but Hitchens can be snide and snotty: not my idea of
entertaining reading.) Turns out Hitchens, here, is not as arrogant as he
usually is, he's just laying out the information as he has gleaned it
(from what I assume would be an extensive bibliography, not included in the
audiobook.) The snide comment or two gets through, but when you consider what
he's learned about organized religion and the claims they've made throughout
history, and what they've done and continue to do in God's name, it's a
wonder he can maintain any sense of fairness and decorum at all. |
|
Expelled
From Eden: A William T. Vollmann Reader |
McCaffery
/ Hemmingson |
I've
been curious about Vollmann ever since DFW name-dropped him in his phenomenal
cruise ship piece "Shipping Out" (later to be rechristened as the
title piece of his miraculously good non-fiction collection A
Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again) and I tend to enjoy anthologies
with the word reader in the title; A chance encounter with The John McPhee
Reader launched me on a wicked McPhee kick that's never really ended
(see my page devoted to McPhee...). |
|
Angels
& Demons |
Dan
Brown |
DaVinci
Code was a quick fun read. I heard from a reliable source that this was a bit
better. Indeed it was. [I had the same problems with A&D that I had with
The DaVinci Code: supposedly intelligent characters put ridculously elaborate
clues together as the clock ticks, but in other scenes they can't recognize
screamingly obvious clues that an 8th grader could spot. (Like whether a word
is written backwards, etc.) ] |
|
Neal
Stephenson |
A
breather (if you can call a 500 page novel a breather) before moving on to
Stephenson's Baroque Cycle Vol. II, The Confusion. And incredibly
dense story of future tribalism combined with nanotechnology run amok. |
||
The
Baroque Cycle Vol. I, Book III: Odalisque |
Neal
Stephenson |
If
Book One: Quicksilver, was primarily
about Daniel, and Book Two: King of the
Vagabonds was primarily about Jack, Book Three, being titled Odalisque, must be about Eliza. Indeed, she has
gone from nearly being executed in a Turkish harem, to a financial
impressario who plays European finance like a board game, uses Kings like
pawns, and obtains title and position with astonishing political and social
alacrity. |
|
William
Smith and the Map That Changed the World |
Simon
Winchester |
Audiobook.
I love that he's reading his own words here. (Winchester could read a
friggin' SOFTWARE MANUAL and it would be engaging.) The first map of what exists UNDER England and
Wales was created by one guy in the early 1800s. ONE GUY launches
modern geology. |
|
The
Baroque Cycle Vol. I, Book II: King Of The
Vagabonds |
Neal
Stephenson |
I
know; pretty ballsy to state that I'm reading entire 2700 page Cycle. I just
finished Quicksilver and enjoyed it
tremendously. I would say as much as Cryptonomicon, but in a very
different way. Both are tremendously educational, but I have to tip my cap to
Quciksilver...how else would I EVER learn this much about 17th century
Europe and enjoy the process. |
|
Moby
Dick |
Herman
Melville |
As
one who claims to enjoy not just books but literature, how precisely
have I made it to age 43 not having read this? 6-7-08. Sat up straight, inhaled deeply and started this
sucker at long last, and the news I have to report is that there's no news at
all: ALL YOU'VE HEARD IS TRUE; there's a reason Moby-Dick is on all sorts
of Best Of All Time lists. That bit about the pulpit having a friggin ROPE
LADDER? Are you kidding me? AND the preacher pulls up the rope ladder after
climbing into the pulpit? Holy crap, what was Melville jonesing on? And
Ishmael completely abandoning almost all of his prejudices against
"pagan cannibals," growing to feel genuine affection for Queequeg?
Masterful. (What a treat, when I really want to like a book, and have wanted
to like it for a long time, and then it's better than I was expecting it to
be. They're just now boarding the Pequod and I can't wait to read
more.) 7-18-08. Back into it and relishing every page. Melville
apes Shakespeare with stage directions...an interesting choice, and I'm not
minding it. 8-15-08. I'm reading several books concurrently (as you can
see) but still loving this one above all. Occasionally—but only
occasionally—Melville's language can feel archaic for obvious reasons,
but most of the time his prose is smooth and soothing; It really is a
pleasure to read. He has a penchant for comparing newly observed phenomena
(Ahab's intractible nature, the process of whaling, etc.) with life in
general and the human condition; I'm sure it would get annoying in the hands
of a lesser writer, but here it's endearing. 4-26-09. Finally finished this after several interruptions
(my ADD manifests itself in almost every facet of my life and reading is no
exception). If you've ever thought of reading this, get to it. But beware:
there's a devious little surprise lying in wait near the end. Not the obvious
final confrontation between man and whale, but just prior. A utterly
heartwrenching moment between Ahab and Starbuck... |
|
Anathem |
Neal
Stephenson |
I
was halfway through Stephenson's King Of The Vagabonds (which I'm enjoying
TREMENDOUSLY...Jack had just used a homemade bomb to feed an entire peasant
village!) when months of curiosity—and a Books-a-Million Christmas gift
card burning a hole in my pocket—finally got the best of me. If I can
resist doing up a web page for this [I did] I might finish it before
summer [again, I did.] If my OCD kicks in it could take me through the
summer. I'm not plowing through ANYTHING as fast as I burned through Cyrptonomicon
again. By not giving my brain any downtime (I was reading any waking moment
that I wasn't at work or asleep—and taking copious notes—and
molding them into something remotely presentable) I
actually made myself sick. 4-18-09. So I lied. Got about 100 pages in per day and devoured
this monster over spring break. Dig it: a world where the monks in
monasteries are not the hyper-religious scholars but the high-end
philosophers & scientists who have been banished by society for thousands
of years of work that led to A-bombs, genetic enginering abuse, etc. + they,
the monks, can be yanked from the monasteries by society when society isn't
smart enough to solve this big problem or that + one of those problems turns
out to be an alien invasion + the monks have to dump their robes and don
space suits = 1000 pages of yee haa! |
|
The
Baroque Cycle Vol. I, Book I: Quicksilver |
Neal
Stephenson |
I'm
not sure I've ever seen a writer do what Neal Stephenson has done/is doing
with his career. His name is well-made with Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon,
but The Baroque Cycle shows an artistic maturation that is geometric,
not merely arithmetic. Quicksilver was so
entertaining while also being terrifically educational. My only regret is
that, even with a breakneck reading pace, it will still take forever and a
day to enjoy all of this. (And Anathem awaits beyond the horizon too!) |
|
The
Partly Cloudy Patriot |
Sarah
Vowell |
Audio,
in the car, between bits of Simon Winchester. And as with Winchester's book,
I prefer to hear the book rendered in the author's imperfect but utterly
engaging voice. Here' she's talking about Gettysburg, politics, her own silly
life, etc. |
|
Neuromancer |
William
Gibson |
Cryptonomicon had me jonesing for cyberpunk.
This has Blade Runner and especially The Matrix written all
over it (or vice versa) (or vices versas) (whatever). Gibson's style is
bare-bones; you have to fill in a lot of gaps and it's a lot of fun seeing if
your imagination matches Gibson's. Most of the time mine can't hold a candle.
Luckily there's a lot of help online: |
|
Neal
Stephenson |
This
thing is a monster, but I've wanted it ever since finishing Snow
Crash. Finding a paperback copy for $2 was a very happy accident.
(Now...I'd like to pick it up soon, but Confederacy of Dunces just
came today. Stay tuned.) 1-24-09. Alright, I haven't finished Moby Dick yet,
and don't care. I know I'm loving it and I'm not in the least worried that I
won't finish it! BUT...phenomenal reviews of Stephenson's recently released Anathem
steered me toward the Baroque Cycle, none of which I owned at that
moment, and toward Cryptonomicon, which I did, and which has been on
my short list since finishing Snow Crash a few years back, as I said.
It didn't take long (two pages?) to remember that Stephenson's style is one
of the things I enjoyed about Snow Crash, and it wasn't much longer
after that that I committed...not only to all 1130 small-font pages of
Cryptonomicon, but to all 2800 pages of the seven Baroque Cycle
novels, AND THEN to Anathem which I think is pushing a thousand pages
itself! We'll see. When I embarked on my five month Richard Powers binge I
was pretty sure I wouldn't honor that long term committment and somehow I
did. (It won't happen if the writing isn't good, but then you won't make that
kind of committement to writing that isn't good.) 2-11-09. A day or two from wrapping this puppy up, if you can
believe it. (Averaging about 40 pages a day AND doing chapter thumbnails as I
go...look for a Cryptonomicon page on this
site, possibly this weekend.) 2-14-09. Good God... I may never recover from reading this
unforgettable book! It takes its place along side Infinite Jest and Gold
Bug Variations as one of my lifetime favorites. |
||
Twilight |
Stephanie
Meyer |
Certain
titles become cultural imperatives. Da Vinci Code, Harry Potter,
and you can't teach in a public school today, as I do, without seeing one of
the four current iterations of Meyer's Twilight series flowing up and
down the hallway in most female hands. An exaggeration perhaps, but in fact,
in my five classes, perhaps two copies of the book will be visible on
desktops at any moment. Counting the perhaps one or two more copies lurking
in backpacks, you're talking about perhaps 3 of 25 students reading them.
Extrapolate to a student body of 2200 and you have over 250 kids reading the
books (to say nothing of the ones who've already read) which might not be
Harry Potter numbers, but for all I know it might be, and either way it's not
bad at all in a time of Wii, Xbox, and 500 TV channels. 1-2-09. Not bad! It ain't JK Rowling but all things
considered, I enjoyed it. (The things considered? As I mentioned about
Rowling when discussing Harry Potter & The Order Of The Phoenix,
Meyer has not met an adverb she doesn't like. And there was a point about
halfway though where, if Bella said ONE MORE THING about how beautiful Edward
is and how she didn't deserve him, I would have flung the book into a wall.
Luckily she seemed to take a cold shower just in time.) |
|
Outliers |
Malcolm
Gladwell |
Well-paced,
well thought out, brief, and terribly, terribly insightful. (I'll
never be able to enjoy summer vacation again!) |
|
The
Ancestors Tale |
Richard
Dawkins |
What
am I going to do? My reading list, as you can see, is quite long. I cannot be
starting new books, and I CERTAINLY can't be starting ten-pounders like this
one....BUT IT'S SO DAMNED GOOD! Dawkins isn't afraid to get too techinical,
which I like because often I can follow him, he's that good of an elucidator.
The story is of a journey taken by a time-traveler travelling BACK in time at
great speed, meeting up with all the branches in his evolutionary tree (first
we hook up with chimps, then other primates, then other mammals, etc.) Sooner
or later a representative of all our ancestors will be walking with us as we
walk further and further back in time. The narrative is patterned after
Chaucer. (The Chimpanzee's tale, The Blue Whale's Tale, etc. Although the
Blue Whale's nearest relative is the hippopotamus of course, not us, but
Dawkins occasionally digresses for fascinating little side trips like that.) 7-27-07. Started this again, but was quickly derailed by
Harry Potter 7 (see below). |
|
On
Beauty |
Zadie
Smith |
Audiobook,
via iPod, on midday, hour-long summer walks (i. e. work-out walks). As with
all audiobooks, the quality of the voice talent weighs heavily on the quality
of the experience—an added dimension that can enhance or detract from
the writing itself. As such, this reader, Peter
Francis James...Good GOD Magnum...completely convincing as:
upper-crusty academic 50-something white male Brit (Howard), AND gangsta
wanna-be black male teenager (Levi), AND disaffected black teenage female
(Zora), AND Esther Rolle-ish, maybe Nell Carter-ish black matriarch (Kiki)
AND rapper Carl, and at least a dozen other Hatians and Brits and New
Englanders...the mind reels at a performance talent matched here only
by Zadie Smith's writing talent. The first paragraph of Chapter 4:
24SEP08. Fantastic! And it
shocks and pleases me to read that David Foster Wallace was her favorite
writer. You'd never know it to read either of the two books of hers I've
enjoyed (White Teeth being the other. Which see, well down this page.) |
|
Next |
Michael
Crichton |
In
the bargain bin at friggin' Food Lion, of all places. Not only is the story
engaging, Crichton appends an extensive recommended reading list, and since
I'm teaching genetics and genomics (among other biological subjects) I
couldn't have found this at a better time (though of course Melville gets
pushed back yet again, through no fault of his own.) |
|
The
Easy Chain |
Evan
Dara |
Sure
enough, I FINALLY curl up with Moby-Dick, and this sucker comes out!
(It won't be here for a few days, but the moment it arrives I shall dive in.
His first book is a stunner, one of my all time favorites (as you can read below and can see on my page devoted to it.) 6-16-08. It's here, I'm
getting started. See the top of this page for current comments. |
|
In
Persuasion Nation |
George
Saunders |
Huge
fan of his for a LONG time. Loved CivilWarLand,
loved Pastoralia.
The last story in this book is called "CommComm" and is, as I have
said more than once and elsewhere on this site, one of my favorite stories of
all time. And it's
online! |
|
The
Brief And Frightening Reign of Phil |
George
Saunders |
Bought
a canister of blank DVDs frm Amazon and needed a few extra bucks to reach the
hallowed $25 tally, earning free shipping. I keep about three dozen books in
the Save For Later part of my Amazon shopping cart for just such occasions:
if the "New/Amazon.com" price is less than $4 over the cheapest
Used/Marketplace price ($4 being the cost of shipping in Marketplace) then I
can buy a new copy from Amazon. TBAFROP was the only book whose Used price
was still close to the new price. (At the time of purchase; The Used price
has come way down since then.) ANYWAY....the book itself is a political allegory.
You will not find Pastoralia- or CivilWarLand-grade laughs
here, but you'll find a few. More importantly, you'll find Saunders's
withering commentary on the basic human tendency to separate others into
"Us's" and "Them's", and on the—usually
concomitant—basic human tendency to follow blindly leaders who describe
the Thems in ways soothing to Us. (It MIGHT take you 60-90 minutes to read
these 130 small, wide-margined, nearly double-spaced, occasionally
illustrated pages. If you're a Saunders fan, I think it's worth it. |
|
The
Discomfort Zone |
Jonathan
Franzen |
He
read the first chapter at the Miami Book Fair and CSPAN filmed him earlier
this year and I ripped it to mp3. I've enjoyed the mp3 enough times that I
committed to a print copy. I listened and read along. Franzen's reading is
far more evocative than his text alone (which might seem obvious, but many
writers' voices do not do their own words justice, I've noticed.) This makes
me wonder what sorts of nuance am I not getting from, really, ANY writer,
when I hear his/her words with my brain voice and not their reading voice. [I
first noticed this in SJ Perelman's hilarious Raymond Chandler spoof,
"Farewell My Lovely Appetizer" which was published in The New
Yorker in 1944 (Dec 16, p but which I first encountered via Selected Shorts,
where it was read HILARIOUSLY by James Naughton. (Not an exaggeration. My
"Farewell" mp3 is one of the handful—of my dozen
thousand—that I like so well I could listen to it immediately after
listening to it.)] |
|
The
Braindead Megaphone |
George
Saunders |
One
of my favorite fiction writers (Pastoralia and CivilWarLand In Bad
Decline are hilarious, as mentioned in the Broom Of The System
comment below) turns his pen to commentary and reportage. I still prefer his
fiction but this was engagingly poignant and hard to put down. |
|
How
To Be Alone |
Jonathan
Franzen |
All
SORTS of good stuff in here. His tiff with Oprah ("Meet Me In
St. Louis"), a long piece ("Why Bother?" usually referred to
as the Harper's Essay) where he questions the relevancy of the novel as an
artform; another long piece about corruption and whistleblowers in the the
Chicago Post Office ("Lost In The Mail." This is a fantastic
article, I must say); another terrific article on prisons in Colorado
("Control Units"). |
|
A
Confederacy of Dunces |
John
Kennedy Toole |
A
friend recently raved about how much fun she was having with this and
promised to give me her copy as soon as she finished with it. Well screw
waiting, said me, when I can get used books for a song online! |
|
The
Periodic Kingdom |
P.
W. Atkins |
Irresistably
slim at 149 pages, and a brilliantly conceived survey of the periodic table
of the elements, presented as if it (the table) were a kingdom and the
elements are regions. Various 3D maps of the "kingdom" (elevations
based upon atomic diameter, another based upon atomic mass, another based on
ionization energies, etc.) show, clearly, how these characteristics of the
elements are interrlated. The analogy is fascinatingly apt in some instances;
when it rains in the region of potassium, the drops of water explode on
impact with the terrain, pointing up the extreme reactivity of potassium and
water. Atkins's writing style can feel slightly stilted at times. (How many
times need one use the word consanguinity, and in sentences like this?
"Complexity can effloresce from subtly different consanguinity."
This is a bit rich for a book putatively aimed at a general reader.) Still, I
teach basic chemisty, yet I'm gaining new insights about the table in general
and several elements in particular. For a science geek like me, the book is
quite fun. |
|
The
Broom Of The System |
David
Foster Wallace |
My
2nd trip through this novel, Wallace's (if legend has it correctly) 1985
senior thesis at Amherst College. I'd forgotten just how much fun this guy
was when he was young. Not to suggest I don't enjoy his recent stuff,
definitely I do. But these days it's his non-fiction I tend to reach for.
Back in the mid-80s DFW was just NUTS: characters named Candy Mandible,
Judith Prietht...a publishing house named Frequent & Vigorous...a desert
installed in the heart of Ohio...a cold-blooded great-grandmother (literally,
not figuratively: her room must be kept at 98.6 or she goes hypothermic)
named Lenore Beadsman, the same name as her great-granddaughter, the book's
protagonist....and I'm not even to page 80 yet. (Did I mention the precocious
cockatiel named Vlad the Impaler?) Wallace remains on a short list of favorite authors
that not only are erudite, but have a real sense of play that I find
irresistible: (Pynchon, specifically in Crying Of Lot 49), George
Saunders (both Pastoralia and CivilWarLand In Bad Decline are
RIOTS); David Schickler (not just "The Smoker" but the rest of Kissing
In Manhattan as well...see below), I'll add to this list, I'm sure. |
|
Flight
Of Passage |
Rinker
Buck |
Back
in 1966, Rinker and his brother Kern (15 & 17 respectively) flew a
rebuilt Piper Cub from New Jersey to California in 7 days (6 days flying, one
day off in El Paso). It's on many lists of great flying stories, so knowing
how much I loved West With
The Night (Beryl Markham) and both Biplane and Stranger To The Ground (Richard
Bach) I took a shot. Two chapters in and I'm enjoying it. Stay tuned. 8-3-07. Very entertaining! With relative ease, Buck
alternates between sounding like the introspective 45 year old he was when he
wrote it to the brash 15 year old he was at the time of the flight. And for
the record, I was able to discern that the flight took place from Saturday,
July 2, 1966, when they departed Basking Ridge, NJ, to Friday, July 8, 1966,
when they arrived in southern California. Buck never states these dates in
his narrative—in fact he appears to go out of his way not to
mention the Fourth of July on the 4th of July!—but gives three or four
clues for those such as myself who enjoy light detective work. Also intersting, I thought: the UPI wire report
reproduced at the start of Chapter 16 (p. 239 in my edition) has several
facts screwed up, clearly the info came from Tom Buck (the boys' father) in
advance of the actual events. I also was amused to read in one of the
reprinted newspaper clippings in Chapter 19 (pp. 294-295) that Tom told the
"Reporter At Large" (Finston) that his crash in 1945 was a military
crash...while Rinker writes on p. 186 that dad's crash, in 1946 actually, was
clearly not a military excursion. Another reprinted clipping retains two
handwritten asterisks highlighting a) more of Dad's exaggeration (he never
saw combat) and b) Dad mentioning the nonexistent waterbag, which is a
recurring comedic issue thoughout the narrative. |
|
Harry
Potter and the Deathly Hallows |
J.
K. Rowling |
All you've heard is true: best of the
seven...amazing, if not downright inspirational. By the end of this book I
was yelling at it, talking to it...crying. (Yes, Abigail Mae, I said crying.
I think reviewer Tina
Jordan put it best: "I wasn't just riveted, I was overcome.")
Funny, sad, action-packed, romantic, mysterious...it's just an amazing
achievement, the best of the series, I think I already said, because as much
as I enjoy postmodernism and other "pomo tricks," (as visitors to
this site well know by now) there really is something to be said for good old
fashioned resolution. And on THAT count, trust me, this book delivers
like Domino's. (The word closure bobs in this book's wake, and will as long
as people are reading these books, which I can all but guarantee will be for
hundreds of years. At least.) Other random thoughts: Like all six of its predecessors, at right around
the 2/3 mark Deathly Hallows goes from being a good story to being a
can't-put-it-down page-turner • Like the recently released Order of
the Phoenix movie, Deathly Hallows has no Quidditch in it
whatsoever, but you do need to know about Quidditch to understand some
details • A gadget that we haven't seen since—if I'm not
mistaken—Book One, Chapter One, reappears in a crucial role. (I'm
mistaken: it shows up in Order of the Phoenix too, but only momentarily.) A
few images from the book that are already seared into my memory: (MAJOR
SPOILERS FOLLOW. Highlight the following white area to view the hidden
text) 1.
Prof.
McGonnagall leading a platoon of charmed desks down a corridor against the
Death Eaters! She actually yells charge! 2.
Didn't
expect Tonks to die, and certainly not both she and Lupin. (I guess Teddy,
like Harry, orphaned as an infant at the hands of Lord Voldemort, can be the
star of the next series!) 3.
Near
the novel's (if not the series's) climax, Molly Weasley (yes, that's Momma
Weasley!) going completely Ellen Ripley on Bellatrix Lestrange, calling her a
bitch at the top of her lungs before blasting her into oblivion! 4.
Then
Voldemort casting off McGonnagal, Shacklebolt and Slughorn (a Slytherin!) to
round on Molly for instant revenge... 5.
...Then
Harry's big reveal when he throws off the Invisibility Cloak and intercedes
on Molly's behalf. (I half expected him to say "Not so fast,
Voldemort!") 6.
In
the midst of the Battle of Hogwarts, Hermione planting one on Ron for showing
compassion to the Hogwarts kitchen elves. At first I thought, 'well of course
she's just happy to see this side of Ron...' but then they both kept at it.
Funny! 7.
Fred.
(sigh...) OK, SOMEONE PLEASE
EXPLAIN TO ME: 8.
Dumbledore
had the Elder Wand, and Snape killed Dumbledore, and Voldemort killed
Snape...so why didn't the Elder Wand respond to Voldemort? How did the wand
pass into the ownership of Draco? Who did Draco kill? (Got my answer:
In Half-Blood Prince, Draco disarmed Dumbledore—separated
Dumbledore from the Elder Wand—moments before Snape killed him. THAT
moment, and not when Snape killed him, is when the Elder Wand chose Draco.) |
|
David
Schickler |
Yet
another gem I got for a SONG at the local library's book sale. This curious
cross between a novel and a short story collection includes Schickler's
hilarious debut piece, "The Smoker," which was published in the The
New Yorker (June 19, 2000) and changed his life almost literally
overnight. I was happy to see that "The Smoker" is
not a one-off from Schickler...that the wit and humor on display in "The
Smoker" pervades the entire book. (I was also thrilled to read that
Schickler is a big fan of CivilWarLand In Bad Decline by George
Saunders, since the last—in fact the only— time I've laughed
aloud this much while reading was when I was reading Saunders.)
I didn't know that the eleven stories were connected in any way (though it's
hinted at plainly in the jacket notes. Duh.) and this made for a surreal
experince as I randomly selected stories to read. Character names kept
reappearing, not to mention the enigmatic apartment building named The
Preemption which is the only "character" that seems to appear in
all the stories. (I've read five of the eleven). |
||
Blink |
Malcolm
Gladwell |
When
you approach someone you know but haven't seen in a while, and whom you
address by name, you can tell within millliseconds that they don't remember
you even if they are good at covering the fact. This book talks about that
sort of instantaneous judgement...the little ways you asses a situation
instantly and, most of the time, correctly. (Holy crap, you MUST take a look
at this
short talk by Gladwell, not only for his engaging story about marketing
phenomena...BUT FOR THAT HAIR. I can't come up with a single person to
compare Gladwell to, hair-wise. It must be seen to be believed.) |
|
Stiff:
The Curious Life of Human Cadavers. |
Mary
Roach |
Thorough
and fascinating study of what happens to human bodies that have been: o donated to science o buried o exhumed (illegally,
last century) o used in auto crash
impact studies o in plane crashes o shot o crucified o decapitated o cannibalized o composted (both ecologically and
traditionally) Roach
realizes the absurdity inherent in working on dead people (some things you
just can't NOT joke about) while also stressing how essential such work is
today; how much we've come to depend upon it. |
|
Cormac
McCarthy |
This
has been on my list for years now. Both David Foster Wallace and Harold
Bloom—two writers who could not be more different—both worship
this thing, so why not gve it a whirl? 6-30-07. Upon finishing this phenomenal story I
immediately did some research. It turns out that most of this barbaric novel
is based on true events. If so....hell, if so then I'm speechless; I was
pretty naive about just how uncivilized civilized humans can be. At times (at
many times) I was reading the book with jaws agape. The violence flashes like
lightning and just as quickly is done, the reader left attempting to digest
what happened. (Often I couldn't even tell what happened. McCarthy
used so many arcane terms, I had to read at the computer so I could google
unknown words. A quick flip through my well-marked copy reveals an average of
something like two unfamiliar terms per page. One page had six.) |
||
Something
Happened |
Joseph
Heller |
When
the publisher who fought for (and essentially discovered) Catch-22
says this one is better, you pay attention. This has been on my not-so-short
list since seeing Robert Gottlieb rave about it in The Stone Reader. 5-13-07. I'm weird. I had Call It Sleep in my
hands, open and reading. But I set it aside for The Stones of Summer,
which I was enjoying with minor reservations, then my Richard Powers
Half-Year commenced and nothing else mattered until I'd digested every word
he'd written. Now I'm done, and what book do I pick up? Stones? Call
It Sleep? Neither. I pick up this sucker of course. I told you, I'm
weird. (Who knows; Maybe, like the others, THIS one will
be a victim of circumstance and be deferred through no fault of its
own...ain't life grand?) 6-12-07. Now, I'm not going to say "Nothing
happened," (as some infamous reviewer wrote long ago) but this book just
did not work very well for me as entertainment. Much of it has to do with the
repulsiveness of the protagonist. I did not feel good when he felt good and I
did not feel bad when he felt bad. The opposite was true, in fact. It felt
too much like work as well. This is the kind of book I should have put down
after 200 pages or so, something I can NEVER DO. I guess I was holding out
for a more satisfying resolution. Or, really, any resolution. |
|
Eon |
Greg
Bear |
I
brought several "literature" books with me on a recent trip to
Kissimmee/Disney, and at the last minute threw this into my bag. Whaddaya know,
ended up digging into this hard and fast. I completely loved Darwin's
Radio, Blood Music and Moving Mars so why not? So far so
good...the asteroid Juno was inhabited by humans in like 2500 AD or so, but
far down the line they learned time travel and the asteroid—60 miles
wide and 180 miles long and essentially hollowed out, containing several
cities—has come back from the future to help us deal with the nuclear
havoc we've wreaked upon our planet. I'm about halfway through at this point. 5-13-07. Bear is amazing. At no time when I'm reading him
do I feel all the things I feel when reading other science fiction (namely,
at least once saying to the writer: "OK, dude, you're trying too hard
here..."). At the end of Eon, Bear gives us a four part epilog that
is is satisfying in the same way the preceding main story was: Incredibly and
WILDLY imagined and extremely well written. I would read the previously
mentioned three books before reading this again (which is meant far more as a
statement about them than about Eon, believe me) but I'd read anything
by Bear before anything by any other Sci Fi writer save for perhaps Asimov. |
|
The
Immortal Game |
David
Shenk |
The
book illucidates—move by move—the famous 1851
pickup game between Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky (two chess
giants of the day) while also presenting minutae about the game, its history,
it's practitioners. I chose to read through the game analysis chapters
first...they alternate with the history chapters. (The game has been famous
since the moment it ended—less than an hour after it started—and
rightly so. Anderssen hands over his two Rooks and Queen, completely numbing
Keiseritsky to the subtle murder he's committing with his Knights and
Bishop.) |
|
Permanent
Midnight |
Jerry
Stahl |
The
friend who offhandedly recommended The Queen's Gambit has been also (but
NOT AT ALL offhandedly) trying to get me to read this for years, going so far
as to buy me a copy recently. I'm 2/3 through it and all I can do is wonder
why I enjoy not only this story but all stories of heroin addiction. The
Naked Lunch, Trainspotting, Jesus' Son, Pulp Fiction...
the list goes on (I'll be renting Requiem For A Dream soon,
instantaneously recommended to me by a coworker upon my confession of my
morbid fascination), and I end up in tears reading and seeing what
these people do to themselves and the people around them. It's a shattering
experience as a reader/movie-goer; what on earth must it be like to
experience this madness firsthand? (I'm happy to confine that to my
imagination, of course.) 3-7-07. What does one say after reading something like
this? I've written five or six thoughts here but I keep deleting them;
Nothing comes close to describing this book, save perhaps for a heavyweight
punch to the solar plexus. This one will be with me for quite awhile. |
|
The
Echo Maker |
Richard
Powers |
I've
heard of people buying up all of one author's work and reading it all [1] and
I never understood it. Boy do I now. The past five months have been one
amazing story after another, a string of great reads....each one I couldn't
wait to come home to after work, that I looked for excuses to escape with. The
Echo Maker is no exception. (It's not feeling like one of his best, but
that's not really saying anything since Powers has yet to write a bad book.
Besides, I just passed the 2/3 mark this morning and who knows WHAT lies in
wait in the final third! The jaw-dropping moment that makes Plowing The
Dark great doesn't happen until very near the end, though of course The
Gold Bug Variations was and is great from start to finish. As I once
read, there's something almost monumental about GBV.) [1] Mark Moskowitz talks about it in his terrific
documentary The
Stone Reader which, if you love to read, you should see. 20.
Gold Bug Variations 21.
Three Farmers On Their Way To A Dance 22.
Galatea 2.2 23.
Plowing The Dark 24.
Echo Maker 25.
The Time Of Our Singing 26.
Gain 27.
Operation Wandering Soul 28.
Prisoner's Dilemma
29.
Gold Bug Variations 30.
Three Farmers On Their Way To A Dance 31.
Galatea 2.2 32.
Gain (the connection with Evan Dara's The
Lost Scrapbook is too strong to ignore) 33.
Operation Wandering Soul (enjoyed OWS the
least of the nine on the first time through, but have been willing to give it
a second look) 34.
Plowing The Dark (Still smile when I remember this
book's magical ending!) 35.
The Time Of Our Singing 36.
Echo Maker 37.
Prisoner's Dilemma |
|
The
Time Of Our Singing |
Richard
Powers |
Who
would have thunk, back in September (see Prisoner's Dilemma, about six
rungs down) when I expressed my pipe dream of devouring Richard Powers's
entire body of work, that I would actually be able to stay focussed enough to
do it, with my A.D.D. A**? 2-3-07. Finished this mini-monster last night, a few
strokes after midnight, and by now, saying "WOW, HOLY SH**, THAT WAS
AMAZING" after closing the back cover of a Powers novel is just not
saying anything anymore because it has happened almost every single time. So
this time, I'll say: Even if The Echo Maker sucks canal water (and of
course it doesn't) he would deserve that National Book award, or seven. In Time
Of Our Singing, We follow several characters in one multiracial American
family from birth to death...and that's about all I'll attempt to share in
this limited space aside from also stressing that the book is vast, and complicated,
and because it's an exhaustive retelling of a unique but surely not uncommon
African-American experience, I often forgot I was reading a writer who's
writing prior to this book was certainly not anti-diversity, but not terribly
diverse. (I can't recall any black characters—not so much as a
figurant—in any of his prior work. Not that multiculturalism is a
requirement for good writing: the fact remains that there are countless
places in this country where there are few if any black people, and I don't
see why stories set there are less valid than ones set in any of the
countless places where there are few if any white people, or a 50-50 mix. And
really, no one said they are, so I'm sort of talking to myself here I guess.)
Anyway. My only caveats, and there're two: 1)
occasionally Powers overdoes his emphasis: "She closed the door, ending
every story ever written..." or some such. Luckily this only happens
once every dozen pages or so, so I'll cut him slack. 2) The aging of the
voices. Characters at 20 are verbally indistinct from characters at 50.
Powers drops a lot of cultural refernces that one can use to establish and
maintain chronology—which I like, not only for continuity's sake, but
for the fun of actually looking stuff up—but Jonah and Joey's conversations
in 1992 sound and feel the same as their exchanges in the early 60s. |
|
Plowing
The Dark |
Richard
Powers |
My
Powers project is making me antsy...I'm liking almost everything I'm reading from
him (including THIS!) but I REALLY want to check out his new one, The Echo
Maker, which recently won a National Book Award. (Operation Wandering
Soul was nominated in 1993 but lost to The Shipping News, by Annie
Proulx...another book I loved.) It's a test of my discipline to read this and then
the huge Time of Our Singing (and read them well, taking notes
and looking stuff up on Google, the way I usually read a book...not just
blasting though it), and only THEN tackling The Echo Maker. As I've
mentioned, no one is more surprised than I that I've stuck to this program!
It doesn't hurt at all that I've almost completely connected with almost all
of Powers's work: this is no chore. 12-26-06. Of the six Powers novels I've finished since
August, this one is takes it's place with Galatea 2.2 as a lifetime
favorite. Don't get me wrong, I loved all these books, and do indeed
recommend them all for various reasons, but Plowing the Dark has a
subtle twist at the end that lifts it above the others, and in a way, above The
Gold Bug Variations. I'm not going to spoil it, but two pages before the
end of this 400+ page novel—that is in essentially two unrelated,
interlaced novels—Powers brings the two stories together in a way that,
for me at least, was utterly and magnificently jawdropping. On to The Time Of Our Singing! |
|
Gain |
Richard
Powers |
Against
all odds, and with, so far, only one diversion (the delectable Chess
Artist, inhaled in about 4 days, last month) I appear to be holding true
to my goal of reading all of Richard Powers's books consecutively (excepting
of course The Gold Bug Variations, WHICH I STILL LOVE, TWO YEARS AFTER
READING IT.) Gain is two stories wrapped around each other, that
never overlap and barely intersect, like the two snakes in a cadeucus. One
story is the 160 year saga of the Clare Chemical Company, (a la Procter &
Gamble, Dow, etc. P&G is occasionally cited in the novel as Clare's main
competition) which begins in 1830 when a gentleman named Clare and his sons
haul some of their homemade soap to a customer on the other side of Boston.
The shipping cost them more than their received payment, but the soap was
such a hit that the company took off and never looked back, growing and
diversifying, reacting to changes in the country's politics and economy
(Civil War, myriad depressions and recessions) over the next century and a
half. The other story concerns Chicago-area real-estate agent Laura Bodey and
her bout with ovarian cancer. The barest of intersections in the two stories
occurs near the end when it appears that Clare's chemicals are the cause of
Laura's cancer. This novel reminded me of Evan Dara's The Lost
Scrapbook quickly and often. In fact I would not at all be surprised to
learn that Powers had been influenced by Dara's novel. |
|
The
Chess Artist |
JC
Hallman |
Taking
a break from my Powers obsession to nurture my ongoing love affair with chess
(begun ostensibly with my first reading of David Foster Wallace's (still)
amazing essay "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" but
which was pulled into mercilessly tight focus two years ago with my
first—and immediately upon completing it, second—reading of
Walter Tevis's fanstastic chess novel The Queen's Gambit.) |
|
Operation
Wandering Soul |
Richard
Powers |
One
of the character's in Galatea 2.2 that I liked (Diane) really disliked
Operation Wandering Soul. Color me curious to see why Powers would
have one of his characters hate one of his books (and hate was indeed the
word Diane/Powers used.) 12-23-06. I'm halfway through Plowing The Dark, and
of the six Powers novels I've read, only Operation Wandering Soul here
left me scratching my head. Undoubtedly virtuosic, but there is a plot twist
at the end which facilitates the ultimately positive message of the book. If
you miss that twist—and I did—this book will seem, well,
hopeless. And even if true, that's OK, we can't all have a happy ending |
|
Prisoner's
Dilemma |
Richard
Powers |
Powers's
second book. Number nine comes out next month, and I've decided that I'm
going to work my way from his first (the just completed Three Farmers On
Their Way To A Dance) to the most recent (the as yet unreleased #9, The
Echo Maker.) By the time I finish this, then gobble up #4 (Operation
Wandering Soul. #3 is Gold Bug Variations which I read a couple
years ago) then devour #6 (Gain. #5 is Galatea 2.2 which I read
just last month and which pretty much started this mania) then #7 (Plowing
The Dark) then #8 (The Time Of Our Singing) then Echo Maker,
it should be time to pick out my summer reading next June! With my wandering eye and short attention span, I
seriously doubt I'll be able to stay focussed over six books. We'll see. |
|
Three
Framers On Their Way To A Dance |
Richard
Powers |
Loved
Powers's The
Gold Bug Variations in a huge way, Galatea
2.2 was both similar to—and different enough from—GBV not
to disappoint. So now I'm starting at the beginning with Mr. Powers. The story
goes (as explained in the half-autobiography, half-Pygmalion fable ) Powers
was working in computers (DP?) in Boston and one day, in a museum, turned a
corner and saw August
Sander's famous eve-of-WWI photo of the eponymous three farmers. Eight
books later (I think his 9th is soon to be released) he's one of the
country's most respected fiction writers, and—better yet—rapidly
nearing the top of my love list. |
|
Spalding
Gray (audio) |
This
poor bastard. I worshipped him from fairly early on, coddling and protecting
a VHS recording of an HBO broadcast of his Terrors of Pleasure
monologue for over 16 years before converting it to DVD last month. It dawned
on me during one of his monologues (I don't know which one it was, Monster
In A Box, maybe Gray's
Anatomy...whichever one in which he was uncontrollably barking)
that this guy, loveable genius though he might be, was one seriously
screwed up puppy. And then, even though he was with one woman for, what,
a couple decades? He finds love with someone else, settles down and starts a
family, and life is suddenly good. And he thinks "How am I going to
write any more monologues when I have no more crises in my life?" Within
a day of expressing that thought while visiting friends in Ireland, he is
involved in a horrific car crash that doesn't quite take his life, but screws
him up so badly that he instantly had many more crises worth writing about.
But the wreck wasn't what drove him to suicide in the end. The wreck was
merely the first domino to fall, with other dominoes representing his
inability to reclaim the Long Island house he immediately regretted selling,
being a master storyteller but by chance not being in NYC on 9-11-01 and
missing the story of a lifetime, and of course, to borrow his own words (from
his phenomenal breakout performance Swimming
To Cambodia) "...other things...we will never know about." Sam Shephard is reading this final monologue, and
while I always have liked Shephard in the past and do definitely like
listening to him read here, there are so many phrases that are
characteristically Gray—I can hear Spalding saying them so differently
than Shephard does, pausing for effect here, milking it for the laugh
there...I'm happy to have it, but it's just not the same. (Sigh.) <:'-( |
||
Body
and Soul |
Frank
Conroy |
And
the pinball bounces again...I have three Richard Powers novels
enroute—overdue actually—and good ol' Dow Mossman splayed out on
my dining room table with plenty o' notes and scribblins, and on a fluke I go
and and dive into this that's been on my shelf three years, a beautiful
hardcover copy that I got from the local library for like $5, and then grew
to hate the deckle edge and later actually sanded the deckle edge off
to make the pages smooth and flip-able or thumb-able. Aug 31, 2006. There's actually a word for this type of book, a book
that follows a character from youth to adulthood: bildungsroman. It's
an unweildy word, in my opinion, though I've seen it in several places
before, and in fact it was one of those words I'd had to look up five or ten
times and never absorbed the meaning of. But the shoe fits like a...like
a....(no.) But it does! I LOVED THIS, in no small part because it reminded me
so much of Walter Tevis's book The Queens Gambit (scroll down a-ways).
The kid's a poor prodigy piano player. Mommy drinks, no dad, kid meets a
kindly music teacher who, luckily, has ALL SORTS of connections (actually,
this kid lucks into a LOT of sh** that I came simply to refer to as
"narrative lube," which descriptor you'd think would sort of have
to disqualify a book from being good, and maybe it does. But I still loved
this. I came to care quite a bit about what happened to almost every
character in the book. Even some unsavory ones.) |
|
Galatea
2.2 |
Richard
Powers |
My
attention, w/r/t books, is more and more like a pinball, glancing off this
bumper, then resting in that little bucket seat only for a second until it
gets bopped back into play. I FINALLY sat down with Stones of Summer
after FINALLY sitting down with Call it Sleep...and then happened
across a $4 copy of this. As you can see if you scroll down a year or two, I
loved Powers's The Gold Bug Variations more, almost, than my own sweet
pulse and have been scheming a re-read ever since finishing it. This will do for now; half the page count, and it
is freakishly meta in a way I've never seen meta done before: The book
features Powers himself as the protagonist in obviously fictional construct
(teaching a computer program to think, more or less) but the construct
is embedded in a narrative that, with not much research, proves to be
Powers's own literary history. His first four novels—Galatea 2.2
is his fifth—are alluded to then later dicussed outright in this novel
as they are written and released. Powers even offers witheringly honest
reactions to some reviews of his first four. AND...in the case of good old
GBV, a fair amount of explication is provided, with (joy!) my beloved Jan
O'Deigh (GBV heroine) making a cameo! So of course I love it. |
|
Speak,
Memory |
Vladimir
Nabokov |
Started
this several years ago. It was great* and getting better but I got
sidetracked (as is my wont). I finally bumped it to the top of my list. *And by great I don't mean really good. I mean,
every paragraph has at least one moment that inspires awe at the simple
mastery of the language. And all this from a writer for whom English is a
second language. (Check that. Third language. He was born in Russia,
but around his aristocratic household French seems to have been the preferred
language. ) 7-30-06. I started this in 2000. I read a chapter or two
last summer, but it's now about time I gave this amazing book the attention
it more than deserves. 8-6-06 What a lovely, lovely book. I'm always amazed when
I know I'll reread a book, despite having so many unread books on my list. I had to create a page for this one. |
|
Coming
Into The Country |
John
McPhee |
A
detailed look at three regions of Alaska....Northwest Alaska, in "The
Encircled River," Urban Alaska (Anchorage & Juneau) in "What
They Were Hunting For," and the upper Yukon, near the Canadian border,
in "Coming Into The Country". If you've ever wondered if, in this
day and age, people live in the woods and hunt and fish to feed themselves
and avoid almost all traces of civilization, the answer is "read this
book," and "yes." If you've ever wondered if YOU could, the
answer is "read this book," and "you probably can't." |
|
Heirs
Of General Practice |
John
McPhee |
An
examination of "family medicine" and "general practice"
in Maine. Both sides of the Specialization debate are presented, but it's
mighty hard to argue against a good old family doctor for a community located
in the middle of nowhere. |
|
Abandon
Ship! |
Richard
Newcombe, Peter Maas |
The
movie Jaws. The three of them are going after the shark. Quint, Brody
and Hooper are in the belly of the boat at night, drinking, having a few laughs,
trading stories about scars. Quint shaves everyone's buzz when he points out
that one of HIS scars was obtained during the torpedoing of the USS
Indianapolis, July 30, 1945, and subsequent 4 days in the water while no help
came and survivors were ravaged by sharks. It's a famous moment in a famous movie based on an
actual event. This book reveals excruciating details about the torpedo
attack, the sinking, the survivors adrift on the Pacific at the mercy of the
sun and the sharks. it also reveals INFURIATING details about a ridiculous
kangaroo court martial which drove the ship's surviving captain to commit
suicide, and details about the worthless bags of **** that set him up and
allowed him to take the fall. The book was originally published in 1958. My
version has a fascinating afterward by Peter Maas, with recently discovered
details about how the Navy brass knew the Indianapolis was sailing
straight toward enemy subs but withheld that knowledge, allowed the
captain to think he was in safe waters, then had the GALL to
court-martial him for NOT sailing in a defensive manner: THE ONLY
CAPTAIN OF A SUNKEN SHIP TO BE COURT-MARTIALED IN WWII. |
|
The
Control Of Nature |
John
McPhee |
The
New Yorker re-ran the first third of this book after Katrina battered and soaked
Louisiana. The first third, which originally ran in the late 80s, concerns
human efforts to control the Mississippi River. The second third of the book
concerns man's effort to control the lava flows off the southern coast of
Iceland. The final third concerns man's effort to control the not-so-gradual
disintegration of the San Gabriel mountains in southern California. As always, McPhee is a model of simplicity and
literary efficiency that could easily be described as virtuosic. Writers who
can make complex technical and scientific concepts easy to understand are
exceedingly hard to find, and while McPhee is getting on in years (born in
1931) the world is lucky that he got very good very early in his life and
that he is prolific; we have at least 30 books by him. |
|
The
Chocolate War |
Robert
Cormier |
A
book for teens that a colleague recommended highly. (Since I also work with
teens, maybe it's about time I read something written for them!) |
|
Longitude |
Dava
Sobel |
I've
read this book twice now, and I still love it. It's brief (my first reading
was in one sitting) and one gets the sense that some serious editing was
done. The interpersonal drama between Victorian academics and Noblemen seems
like it could have made this book 500 pages long at least, but Dava Sobel
keeps the narrative humming. As in James Watson's "The Double
Helix," the high science is presented in such an engaging manner that it
could almost be called a page-turner! PREMISE: Before the mid-1700s, mariners, even
high-level naval officers, were dying at sea because they were getting lost.
Sailors could easily tell their latitude by the elevation of the sun and
stars, but finding one's LONGITUDE, on the surface of a sphere that rotates
at 1000 miles per hour at the equator, demands precision timekeeping, and
they simply did not have the necessary precision in a portable timekeeper.
Sure, on clear days and nights they could use the relative positions of the
sun, moon and stars, but these methods required extremely complicated
calculations, and took HOURS. (Forget about cloudy days and nights, as well
as times when the deck is pitching and rolling, as in a storm.) So the
British government offered what today would be over $10 million to the person
who could design a clock with the accuracy AND portability required for
oceanic navigation (i.e. a clock that neither loses nor gains more than 3
seconds per day. At the time clocks were off by as much as a couple minutes
per day.) Long story short: a non-scientist named John Harrison
designed a heavy (50+ pounds) but accurate clock, but was conspired against
by the powers that be (scientists) who thought clocks were a
"gimmick." The
story is about the 5 clocks he made, how accurate they are, and especially
who conspired against him and how. (And his son. This is a story that
compasses decades.) |
|
Freakonomics |
Steven
leavitt & Stephen Dubner |
This
was a VERY quick and very interesting read, and reminded me of
Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point strongly and often. |
|
Zazie
And The Metro |
Raymond
Queneau |
Had
never heard of Queneau but for a single mention in Evan Dara's novel The
Lost Scrapbook. Just started this. 1-26-06. What the hell? A trippy romp around Paris,
and then the cops open up with machine guns?? And who gives a sh** about
Zazie? By the end I couldn't have cared less what happened to her, I was far
more interestied in Marceline and Charles, or "Unkoo" Gabriel. Which
is OK since Zazie is actually a supporting role in the story. |
|
Adventures
of a No Name Actor |
Christmas
gift...one or two chapters in and liking it. FUNNY because he doesn't BS. If
big stars act like assholes Perella says so, and names names, which is even
funnier. 1-1-06. This is HILARIOUS! Every story has made me laugh
out loud. I also like how it seems clear this writer/actor could write
"heavier" stuff if he wanted to. |
||
George
Saunders |
He
had a story published recently in The New Yorker called "CommComm"
that quickly entered my top five favorite short stories of all time. I'll bet
this book was written around the same time; It has a similar feel and many
similar themes, and is very good as well (though I've read only two of its
nine or ten stories.) 12-30-05. Holy crap! I had no idea abject hopelessness could
be so damned funny!! |
||
The
Lost Scrapbook |
Evan
Dara |
This was my second time through this amazing novel.
No one seems to know who Evan Dara is or what else he/she has written. Many
feel the name is a pseudonym. Don't know, don't care. Love it. Love it so
much in fact I took closer notes this time through and created a web page for it. (I'm also in the
process of indexing it, but that will take several months.) (6-10-06.
Gave that up shortly after I wrote this, but I might pick it up again
someday.) The book itself annoys some readers since it takes
over 300 pages to get to the point. It's a series of scenes and
conversations, the beginnings and endings of which bleed into one another:
impressions of various individuals and relationships in the fictional
Missouri town of Isaura. The book has no chapters, and the narrative only
breaks in two places. (With two or three blank pages in both places,
strangely.) If you stick with it, there's a point—about 2/3 to 3/4 the
way into the book where the disjointed scenes begin slowly to coalesce. You
don't really notice it happening, which is cool, but it dawns on you that
many of the people you heard from during the first part of the book are
getting sick in Isaura. And the photographic film company that essentially
owns the town (a la Eastman-Kodak in Rochester, NY) is denying any
responsibility, though one of their chemical waste pipes did burst
near an elementary school. For financial reasons much of the town is ready to
accept any- and everything the company says, turning against town
"activists" who distrust the company. But after a while the truth
grows undeniable... |
|
White
Teeth |
Zadie
Smith |
A
friend loaned me this novel a year ago, and I started it then but got
distracted by other reading. Happy to see it again. 11-20-05. A terrific read. It's basically a story of two
guys who fought together in WWII, then moved to England and lived near each
other and raised families. It's painted across the mulitcultural scapes of
North London: Pakistanis, Indians, Jamaicans, Brits, etc. The thing about
Smith's writing...and Heaven help me I KNOW this will come across
disrespectfully but I mean it in with highest respect: Sometimes she reads
like a female writer and sometimes she reads like a male writer. It's a
pleasant surprise, it produces startling effects, and it's definitely
entertaining. |
|
Ghost
Rider |
Neal
Peart |
Rush's
drummer. His daughter was killed in a car wreck in August, 1997, and his wife
died of cancer ten months later. He quits Rush for awhile and hops on his
motorcycle and doesn't get off it for almost a year. This has a real "Zen
and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" feel to it, for several
obvious reasons, but a big difference is the sense that Peart is easing away
from madness as the trip unfolds, whereas Robert Pirsig slid into it. 9-25-05. OK here's another difference: Pirsig doesn't come
across as a shmuck in several places. A couple times I almost set the book
aside in annoyance and almost in disgust. Now yes, Peart just lost his wife
and daughter, but the anti-Americanism seeps off the page (not that it isn't
warranted, at times) and the sneering way he refers to one young
lady—who had the audacity to change her mind about him—only as
"that woman". Eeek. (Ever since Clinton, that phrase has struck a
nerve with me.) And his friend gets busted for drugs, a problem the friend
has had before (this is the "third strike," it's conspicuously
underemphasized) and it's admitted and acknowledged openly...yet this
incarceration is repeatedly referred to as an "injustice."
(Although, on second thought, if Peart and friend are railing against the
mere fact that drugs are illegal, then OK, I guess I understand the use of
"injustice." It didn't really feel that way when I was reading it.
It felt like they were whining that the guy had been caught, which, don't do
the crime, and all that.) |
|
Harry
Potter & The Half Blood Prince |
J.
K. Rowling |
Halfway
through it and enjoying it at least as much as the first five HP
books.Everyone's getting older, kids cuss now ("Damn!") Rowling
even drops an irate "slut" into the mix, so to speak. Sluts?? MY
DAUGHTER WILL NOT READ THIS SATANIC SCRIPTURE!! :-) Harry's become such a
well-rounded character (popping off at Dumbledore even!), it's gets easier
and easier to put up with the relatively minor things that bug me about
Rowling's style (See Order of the Phoenix comments way down this
page.) |
|
Gold
Bug Variations |
Richard
Powers |
A
mid-50's scientist was on the verge of real discovery in the realms of DNA
research, and nothing happened. Decades later a librarian wants to know why.
Where'd he go? What happened? If you liked Gravity's Rainbow you might
want to give this a look. It has what I'll go ahead and call a Pynchonian
level of technical discussion. Power's voice is hard work, but after awhile I
found it growing on me. Rich characterization, imagery, and arcane references
galore. Many appear to be included to aid with chronology...the book is non-linear.
Not to a fault, but almost. 7-14-05. Took this book on a recent trip to Australia/New
Zealand. 14 hour plane flights, 4 hour bus rides...I'd finish it in no time
right? Wrong. I never cracked it once for all the iPod listening. 7-29-05. Just finished, and the question that keeps turing
over in my mind is: so, why CAN'T this be my favorite book of all time?
I think it might be. It's got music (and lots of it), it's got science (just
a little more than I could get my head around—not a bad thing), it's
got aching romance (I've discovered I have a bit of a taste for romance here
as I plow into my 40s), it's got suspense and puzzles and art and trivia, to
say nothing of just being wonderfully erudite and well-written and DIFFICULT.
[The really good books that I've gotten lost in have been books that rewarded
study and note-taking, and character lists. Like the good old Queen's
Gambit back in November, I might have found myself doing an instant
reread, were it not for this puppy's 600 page count. (I got a Harry Potter
waiting in the wings, Jackson.) ] |
|
How
The Mind Works |
Steven
Pinker |
This
is the big one. I've had my eye on it for some time. Finally bit the bullet, but
of course it's 600 pages, AND I'm pretty well committed to "Speak,
Memory." We'll see. 5/2/04. I'm liking this a LOT. Pinker, like Carl Sagan,
and John McPhee, and Robert Wolke (my favorite science writers) has an
ability with the language that makes him at least as good a writer as he is a
scientist. No small compliment when you realize that Pinker's credentials as
a cognitive science researcher are, from what I can tell, unmatched by any
other popular science writer. He has an ease with the language that makes a
dense page of text something to look forward to (Several successive pages
having no images and few paragraph breaks can be intimidating, even to we
avid readers) and like the three popularizers mentioned previously, Pinker
can be very funny. |
|
Bobby
Fischer Goes To War |
David
Edmonds and John Eidinow |
I
love chess, and it has always killed me that Bobby Fischer is such an
incorrigible prick. Reading what took place before, during and after the 1972
Reykjavik World Championships, it's a wonder they took place at all. Fischer
had to have every little detail HIS WAY. Ridiculous demands that for the most
part were catered to. Combine this childish behavior with the racking
paranoia of the Russians...like I said, How did this take place? (Chess books
aren't supposed to be this engaging!) |
|
The
Tipping Point |
Malcolm
Gladwell |
When
and why does "word of mouth" start kicking in after a movie is released?
Why do some ideas become fashionable to many people and other ideas remain
localized, or unknown? Why is Kevin Bacon the poster child for networking and
well-connectedness when there are almost 700 other actors who are better
connected in Hollywood? How could 40 or 50 kids in New York, simply by
wearing hush puppies, revive the popularity of the shoes on a national scale?
The book is ostensibly about human connections, and ideas that
"stick," But to ME it screams chaos theory: a social variation on—or
version of—the fabled "Butterfly Effect." |
|
The
Da Vinci Code |
Dan
Brown |
Took
me long enough, right? :-) As you can see on this page, I don't usually seek
out bestsellers. This one, though, has become something of a cultural
imperative, and it was on sale, so what the hay. Is it good? It is a good pulp
thriller. Is it fun? Yes indeed. Is it well-written? Even considering
that Brown isn't striving to be Hemingway, my answer to this question is
still only: More or less. It IS well-paced. Brown can titrate the suspense in
just the right doses to make this a WICKED page-turner. (e.g. It's 2 AM and I
really should go to bed since, you know, work tomorrow. But the chapters are
tantalizingly short, and almost every single one ends with a teaser for the
next chapter! Bastard! ["They opened the box and couldn't believe what
they saw!!" End of chapter. LOL Subtlety is NOT one of Brown's strong
suits.] So I kept saying "Oh, another three pages, what could it
hurt?" Hyeah. Say that enough times and you're up another hour.) All the
discussion of artwork and religion and ritual had me clamoring for Google,
checking everything out, which is my idea of a good time, and for that I'm
grateful to Brown. (It also doesn't hurt that I took my first—and
perhaps only—trip to Europe last summer and spent several hours at many
of the story's locations, especially the Vatican and the Louvre.) But The Da Vinci Code is far from perfect, and it most
certainly isn't genius, contrary to the opinion of one of the jacket
blurbs. In a book purporting to reinstate the primacy of
the sacred feminine, why the hell couldn't Sophie be the Indiana Jones
character and Langdon be the 2nd fiddle? (I know: Brown is a 40 year old
white male teacher...he'll be spending more time writing in the voice of his
main characeter so it helps if his main character is similar to him.) Most characters are one-dimensional. Early on it
seemed that every word out of Cpt. Fache's mouth, every expression that
crossed his face, was unquestionably malevolent. (Hey, the guy's name is
"angry" in French. What am I expecting, right? As I said, Brown
lacks subtlety.) But by far my biggest complaint: There were a few times in
this book where a couple main characters who are supposed to be well-educated
experts are SO brainless that I was actually cussing them audibly: "YOU
IDIOTS! HELLO?? YOU CALL YOURSELF A CRYPTOLOGIST? YOU CALL YOURSELF A
SYMBOLOGIST?? WAKE THE HELL UP!! A couple of examples"[the
following paragraph will spoil it if you haven't read the book and want to.
To see the text, highlight the following blank space, it's white text.] |
|
Snow
Crash |
Neal
Stephenson |
2-8-05. OK I don't know what the hell the
story was with Amazon the other day, but just last night I found like 8
million paperback copies of Snow Crash for pennies each. So that will get
here in a week... 2-23-05. Not bad! A little flimsy in some spots
and careless in others (*I* remembered about YT's dentata, but she didn't?
And what the hell happened to Sushi K?) but VERY imaginative and funny too. |
|
Searching
For Bobby Fischer |
Fred
Waitzkin |
The
movie has long since been memorized by all in my house save for my wife. My
daughters and I love watching it still, 10 years after it came out. It's
about time I went to the horse's mouth. 2-8-05. At least as good as the movie, and—as is almost
always the case with books that also are movies—probably better, if for
no other reason than the details about Russian and American grandmasters, and
of course the lengthy chapter at the end about Fischer himself. (OF NOTE: in
the movie, Josh beats the cocky kid at the end. This is a dramatization of
the 1986 Primary Nationals, held in Charlotte, NC, and in the actual event
Josh did win the championship, but not that last game, as he did in the
movie. In reality Josh and Jeff
Sarwer played to the bone: two kings left alone on the board. Jeff and Josh both ended up
with 6 wins and a draw, but because Josh began the tournament as the top
seed, he played tougher opponents and was declared the tournament champion.) |
|
The
Lovely Bones |
Alice
Sebold |
My
Mom, a librarian, strongly recommended this to me, and I'm enjoying it, even
though I thought it was [hard swallow] an Oprah book. And you know
something? It IS an Oprah book: sort of like the literary equivalent of what
a lot of people call a chick flick. But you know something else? It's
terrific. The older I get, the more willing I am to check out a chick
flick—I really liked "Love Actually," for instance—and
with my very long reading list it will take a lot more to bump an Oprah book
to the front of my list, but at least it's not unthinkable, which it probably
was as recently as say five years ago. Which tells you nothing about the book and too much
about me. THE BOOK, at long last, is about a 14 year old girl who is brutally
murdered and finds herself in heaven. The narrative consists of her
observations from heaven (and occasional flashbacks) as she sees the effect
her death has on her family, friends, and most interesting of all as far as
I'm concerned, her murderer. I also like that since we're reading the
thoughts of a dead girl who now can see and hear everything, it's written in
what I guess you'd call "first person omnicient." (You've probably
heard about the ending...yes it's weak, but frankly I'm cutting Ms. Sebold
some slack; Like her protagonist, Sebold was horrifically sexually assaulted.
Years later she spotted the guy and reported him to the cops, who
promptly—and thankfully—locked his ass up! Happy endings—or
as happy as an ending to a story that starts like that has any right to
be—do occur sometimes.) |
|
A
Short History Of Nearly Everything |
Bill
Bryson |
Yet
another fantastically written science popularization. This book is for those
who wonder how it is we know the really big things we know about the
universe, written with humor and detail. A rare example of an educational
page-turner. |
|
The
Queen's Gambit |
Walter
Tevis |
When
you have friends that recommend books like this to you, the world is indeed a
nice place to be. I love chess the way that only we who are doomed to suck at
it forever can love it, and THIS BOOK IS FOR ME. It's the story of a young
girl who finds she can visualize entire games in her head and thus has,
forever at her disposal, a "board" on which to run combinations and
follow lines. And she starts kicking the ever-loving sh** out of everyone in
sight, dashing masters against the rocks and grinding state champions under
her heel. And then she gets even better. Her nearly catastrophic bout
with booze feels inserted and frankly is one of the novel's few weak spots,
but screw that, this book is too much fun to bitch about. If you know not
only what the phrase "Mate in nineteen" means, but what it implies,
do yourself a favor and give this book a look. 12-1-04. I've read books twice, but never before have I
read a book and liked it well enough to reread it immediately. First time for
everything I guess. 5-14-06. I'm still on the chess kick that began when I read
this a year and a half ago (now have over 15 books in my "chess
library," read a few pages, or play a game every day) so it's fair to
say this book changed my life. |
|
Harry
Potter & The Order of the Phoenix |
JK
Rowling |
I'm
2/3 the way through this and so far Goblet of Fire is still my favorite. BUT,
Rowling has finished strong in each of the first four books, so #5 here may
end up alongside #4 on my short list. (I must say it for the 10,000th
time: her dialog attribution dives me up the damned WALL!! AGH! Rowling
has never met an adverb she didn't like!! " ' Look out' said Ron warningly..."
" 'I'm tired' said Hermione docilely..." And while Harry's
character is being fleshed out nicely (blowing up at his friends, worrying
about girls, pouting when things go wrong, i.e. being a normal teenager),
Malfoy is still a "maddeningly" one-dimensional character as are
most of the villians. THAT SAID, this is an 870 page book that I'm going to
finish inside of a week: so much fun! 10-17-04: All done and WHEW! Another amazing story. I do
have two minor beefs, but they will spoil it if you haven't read the book and
want to. To see them, highlight the following blank space, it's white text. |
|
Jarhead |
Anthony
Swofford |
This
account of the first Gulf War (1991) is rude early and often. No honest book
about the USMC wouldn't be. I've just started this and makes for quick and
eager reading. Afterward: I enjoyed this A LOT, but I must warn any
hard-core marines (because hard-core marines FLOCK to my site...) ...this may
not be the book for you. Swofford has literary skill (and ambition) and
sometimes he tries a little too hard to display that. (How many times do we
need to hear that you read Homer over there?) |
|
Moving
Mars |
Greg
Bear |
AUDACIOUS.
Greg Bear realizes one possible reality of 200 years from now. The politics
and culture behind the civilization that came after the ones from Earth and
Moon that colonized Mars. The Moon, the Earth and Mars all exist in a loose
federation called "The Triple." Folks from Mars in the late 2100s
are something like the way we Americans view the Brits today: polite,
unaggressive, perhaps to a fault. (Well, not perhaps.) Unfortunately for them
they are also way behind the ever-aggressive Earth technologically. Until...a
small band of Martians make a scientific discovery that tips the scales and
upsets all sorts of balances. The story is told as a 1st person memoir of a major
player in the politics of the time, Casseia Majumdar. (She's at least as memorable
a heroine as Oedipa Maas of T. Pynchon's "Crying of Lot 49.") |
|
Blood
Music |
Greg
Bear |
My
wife gave me Darwin's Radio after hearing one review, and it has turned out
to be inside my top 5 favorite books of all time, and is probably tied with
Carl Sagan's Contact as my favorite Sci-Fi novel. OK that was three
years ago. So why am I JUST NOW getting to my second Greg Bear book? Who
gives a rat's ass, this was AMAZING. It's from 1985, but it's something like
the next level beyond cyber-punk. Think of how The Matrix is reality turned
inside out...Blood Music is reality reconstituted. In other words, in The
Matrix, there is the alternate universe we all are being fed by the machines.
But there's still that dingy gray underpinning: The Desert Of The Real. In
Blood Music reality's tablecloth is unceremoniously yanked from under the
flatware, leaving only a handful of humans left standing, looking around,
going "What...the...hell? And then...the table is yanked. |
|
My
Losing Season |
Pat
Conroy |
Our
library not only loans books but sells them, cheap. Used of course, but
my standards for a book's physical condition are well below what the library
sets for books it will put up for sale, so I often make out like a bandit.
Hardcover copy of this book in great shape? $2. The font is almost too small (is "eye
strain" one or two words?), but, as ever, Conroy's writing is fluid, and
he possesses a love for the game of basketball, and particularly his former
teammates, that seeps off the page. |
|
Into
Thin Air |
Jon
Krakauer |
It's been a long time since I realized I would read
this book someday. I've had many chances to buy it, but finding a copy for $1
was the tipping point, and this occurred last Thursday. I read a few pages
initially, but REALLY curled up with it yesterday (13MAR04), finishing off
the final 270 pages over the course of the day. Like The Perfect Storm,
another famous adventure book, Into Thin Air, is mighty quick reading. After finsihing the book I went online and
discovered Anatoli
Boukreev's response to the book, as well as Krakauer's response to
Boukreev. (Boukreev was being paid $25,000 to guide paying clients--over
twice what other guides were paid, and ten times what the Sherpas were
paid--but wasn't doing that especially well according to Krakauer. It all
gets complicated because much of this ordeal took place in the middle of the
night, during what was basically a hurricane, and well above 25,000 feet,
where there is a third of the normal amount of oxygen in the air and one's
brain rapidly turns to bean dip. And it's grown even more complicated because
Boukreev has since perished in another mountaineering disaster.) |
|
Everything
And More: A Compact History Of Infinity |
David
Foster Wallace |
He's
trying to elucidate the work of Georg Cantor, mathematician who didn't
discover infinity, of course, but who proved that there is more than one
infinity, and that they are different sizes. I can't really say that Wallace
completely succeeds, but I'm a big fan of his
"hyper-colloquial-then-hyper-erudite" style so it was quite fun for
me. AND I did regain an appreciation for a lot of the calculus that I
couldn't handle at age 20. |
|
Thirst |
Ken
Kalfus |
This
one fell in one sitting. It's not too long, a terrific collection of
intriguing short fiction. |
|
A
Fan's Notes |
Frederick
Exley |
If
your life is not working out the way you thought it would, I recommend you do
what Exley did and write something like this. An eye-opening (and
occasionally uproarious) look at addiction, ambition, and depression. (I was
inspired to read this after seeing "The Stone Reader" last summer.
There are at least a half dozen books discussed in that movie that I have
sworn to read. I'll try to make a note when I manage to do it.) |
|
Roger's
Version |
John
Updike |
Read
many poems and a story or two by Updike, but this is my first Updike novel. A
buddy of mine who is a big Updike fan recommended that he and I do a parallel
reading. As I understand it, it's about a theology professor who must deal
with a student who is attempting to use computers to prove the existence of
God. |
|
Annals
of the Former World |
John
McPhee |
Since
I began teaching 8th grade science last year [this was written in 2002,
fyi] [Hmm. That means this table is a decade old. Maybe some rearranging is
in order? .........NAHHH.] (and since 8th grade science in my state is
largely earth science) [or was, until 2005, now there's almost no Earth
Sci in it] I've been looking for someone who can do for geology what Carl
Sagan did for evolution and of course, astronomy. Somehow I didn't know that
McPhee, a long time favorite, had written five volumes on the subject, and
they all could be had within one hardback cover. Great fun, this! (Sure it's
a lot of work, but the best books are. And this is one of the best you'll
find. It won a Pulitzer in 1998 for general non-fiction.) |
|
Soon Perhaps |
Winning
Chess Strategies |
Yasser
Seirawan |
I
much prefer tactical fireworks on the chessboard, but one can only get
pinched and squeezed and suffocated (i. e. handily BEATEN) by patient
positional players for so long before one does something about it... |
Wittgenstein's
Mistress |
David
Markson |
Read
this back in 2001 and have been planning a reread ever since. Spurred to
comment on Goodreads by someone who liked my other posts, I spat out what has
turned out to be my favorite
of my own reviews there. |
|
The
Recognitions |
William
Gaddis |
Had
this on my list for a LONG time. Finally got a copy, have dug in and am
having a grand time looking up facts and vocab. Yes, that is my idea of a
good time! |
|
Song
for the Blue Ocean |
Carl
Safina |
Another
science poularliser named Carl S. It's more than fate. |
|
Serenity
Found |
Edited
by Jane Espenson |
Picks
up where Finding Serenity left off (see below), after the release of
the Serenity movie. Some of these essays are scholarly (some cloyingly
so), some are just silly fun. As with Finding Serenity, I found the
most engaging essays to be the ones written by folks who worked on the show
itself. (In this book, visual effects whiz Loni Peristere, and Capt.
Tightpants himself, Nathan Fillion. The essay by Orson Scott Card is a
highlight as is Espenson's introduction. |
|
The
Stones of Summer |
Dow
Mossman |
I
had to drive to Chapel Hill to see The
Stone Reader two years ago. It is a movie that (pardon me) changed my
life; it changed the way I think about books, and writers, and reading. I
came home and immediately ordered copies of Henry Roth's Call It Sleep
and Joseph Heller's Something Happened but not The Stones of
Summer. Now it's two years later, I have the Stone Reader
DVD, which motivated me to order a copy of The Stones of Summer.
BUT...Two days ago I finally picked up Call It Sleep forgetting
completely that The Stones of Summer was on its way from Amazon. Now Call
It Sleep is back on the shelf and I'm combing through SoS quite
deliberately. I can already tell the book will have its own page on this
site. Overwhelmed by the above mentioned Richard Powers
litany, so this got set aside...but it was set aside by many people who went
on to enjoy it tremendously, so maybe this hiatus is required.... |
|
DOUBT |
Jennifer
Michael Hecht |
An
easy to read reportage of one of the least well-reported philosophical
standpoints. |
|
The
Living Sea |
Jacques
Cousteau |
As
a spanking new oceanography teacher this year, I am in DIRE need of someone
who loves the sea to show me why and how. Carl Sagan Did it for astronomy,
John McPhee did it for geology....Could I ask for someone better to introduce
me to the world's oceans? I found my beat-up, jacket-less copy in the bottom
of a box that was seconds away from being discarded, and even though the book
is 40 years old -- and frightfully politically incorrect (they way this
world-reknowned steward of the seas treats coral reefs is disheartening to
say the least) -- I find myself grabbing the book far more often than I
thought I would. Cousteau, ever-French, is a wonderful tour guide! |
|
The
Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives |
Leonard
Mlodinow |
I'd
always thought that, of the many highlights of Baz Luhrmann's song
"Sunscreen" the following lines were particularly trenchant: |
|
The
Girl With The Dragon Tattoo |
Steig
Larsson |
People
whose opinion you trust can only rave about a book around you for so long
before you start wondering what the frickin' buzz is all about. I'm about 1/3
though this and am having a grand time with it! (More to come...) |
|
How
To Reassess Your Chess, 4th Ed. |
IM
Jeremy Silman |
16JAN11. It won't arrive until
the middle of the week. But when it does I'll dive right in. Going through
the 3rd
edition of How To Reassess Your Chess was an INVALUABLE
experience, opening my eyes to aspects of the game to which I previously had
been oblivious. Supposedly Silman completely rewrote the book
("from scratch" was the phrase that caught my eye) greatly expanded
it, rearranged it, chopped out the Basic Endgame chapter (the chapter that
inexplicably OPENED the 3rd edition!), and added a 90 page section on the
psychological aspects of the game (Silman has a two-page mention of this
topic in his 1998 Complete
Book of Chess Strategy which served the digest-like purpose of that
volume but left this reader wanting more.) |
|
The
Sign of Four |
Arthur
Conan Doyle |
The
Guy Ritchie movie sent me back to the proverbial Horse's Mouth, and it's a
shame that it took so long because this stuff is terrific. Note to
fans of the TV show House Read Sherlock Holmes stories!
It's like House, set in the 1800s. Holmes is House of course (check
the name joke) Watson is Wilson, and the highlight of each story is watching
Holmes/House solve tough problems with simple observations and targeted
guesses. (Not as much wise-cracking in Holmes as in House, and Holmes doesn't
guess wrong as often as House does either.) |
|
Although
of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself |
David
Lipsky |
(Started
this, but got distracted. Soon again perhaps.) |
|
Reading
Like A Writer |
Francine
Prose |
How-To-Write
books carry more weight with me when written by well-published (and
preferrable well-known) writers. Stephen King's On Writing is at the
top of the list, but the more I read this the closer to the top it moves.
(The woman's name is Prose, for chrissakes.) |
|
Guns,
Germs & Steel |
Jaren
Diamond |
I
never finished Collapse* but enjoyed it while I was reading it, and
this primise of this book is too good to pass up and can be summed up in a
simple question: Of the 5 habitable continents (correctly counting Eurasia as
one) why was it the western end of Eurasia that gave rise to the most
influential societies on Earth? Why did Europeans conquer North Americans and
South Americans instead of vice versa? Science has long shown us that
biologically and intellectually all races are essentially identical, so what
was it about Europeans that allowed them to invent guns before other
societies; allowed them to be resistant to the diseases that they
unwittingly used to exterminate 95% of their enemies; allowed them to invent
metal weapons first? The answer, as elucidated by Diamond, is both
head-smackingly simple and excruciatingly complex, and—provided
Stephenson or Vollmann doen't lure me away**—I'll devour this in less
than a week. *the first half of Collapse covers societies
that acturally collapsed, which is what I was interested in, and the latter
half discusses societies that have NOT collapsed, so I drifted... 20JUL09 **...and Stephenson did... (sigh) |
|
My
System |
Aron
Nimzowitsch |
I'm
a tactical junkie, but it's long past time I studied strategy in a serious
way. Much of what I've read about My System (including this edition's
intro by Yasser
Seirawan, one of
my favorite chess writers...this edition being the 1991
"21st Century" overhaul by Lou Hays) talks about how difficult
your first trip through it can be. Nimzo's ideas may not seem to make sense,
you're warned. And I'm seeing this, but really, anytime you can tag along as
one of the greatest players in history walks you through game after game and
position after position—including 50 of his own complete games with
meticulous analysis—life is still sweet. |
|
Sway |
Ori
& Rom Brafman |
In
the same vein as Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, Tipping Point or Blink.
Perhaps not quite as polished, but still a very informative and fun stundy of
why we as humans simply cannot help but to act irrationally far more
frequently than we'd ever admit. |
|
Collapse |
Jared
Diamond |
Why
are the monolithic stone heads essentially all that's left of the once
thriving civilization on Easter island? (Hint: Don't cut down all your
trees.)
|
|
|
Thomas
Pynchon |
What
am I, nuts? Do I not have five books in progress already? Haven't I read this
twice already? Am I really this impulsive? |
|
Beloved |
Toni
Morrison |
I'm
not inherently attracted to Morrison's work, but how many "Best Of All
Time" lists that I respect will have to include this before I tackle it?
None more (says Nigel) since I started it this morning. After a page and a
half though, I can already tell this will be a TON of work. (As a fan of D.F.
Wallace, and T. Pynchon, this is not a bad thing for me.) (4-22-07: I made the mistake of looking
up all sorts of articles about this book, I was enjoying it so much, then
some spoilers got through and ruined it for me. I'll finish someday, no
question, but not before the newness of this "spoilage" wears off.) |
|
V. |
Thomas
Pynchon |
Christmas
gift....this has been on my "to read" list for some time. Two or
three pages in and it already feels like Gravity's Rainbow (i.e. difficult)
which I knew it would, but a higher level of committment will be required to
fully enjoy this thing. We'll see if I can muster it while all the other
Christmas presents and activities beckon for attention. |
|
Call
It Sleep |
Henry
Roth |
It's
been on my short list for several years now. On numerous "Best Of All
Time" lists. |
|
Portnoy's
Complaint |
Phillip
Roth |
My
better half found a tattered copy in a buck-apiece sale at the local library.
She's not terribly literarily minded, so spying this in her considerable haul
was a nice surprise. |
|
The
Blank Slate |
Pinker |
See
Words & Rules comment two rungs below... |
|
The
Blind Watchmaker |
Dawkins,
Richard |
Consensus
recommendation. |
|
Words
& Rules |
Pinker,
Steven |
Have
yet to read an unengaging book by Pinker. He's a superb writer...this one is
quite overdue. |
|
Atlas
Shrugged |
Ayn
Rand |
Had
it on my list for two reasons. 1. I loved The Fountainhead which I
read 20 years ago. 2. It's on numerous highly regarded "Best Of All
Time" lists. I really should at least take a look. |
|
The
Bible Companion |
Isaac
Asimov |
I've
picked this up numerous times as a reference. (It can be a sort of Cliff's
Notes for both New Testament and Old.) |
|
Complications |
Atul
Gawande |
Have
sampled bits of this in The New Yorker and thoroughly enjoyed myself.
(Oct-Nov 2017: Now that I'm teaching Anatomy/Physiology, I pulled this
down from the shelf and devoured it in two days.) |
|
Chemistry
Explained |
Robert
Wolke |
A
text book with a sense of humor. Chemistry is a weak spot in both my science
knowledge and my interest. Wolke makes you love whatever he's writing about. |
|
Mason
& Dixon |
Thomas
Pynchon |
Often
recommended, occasionally vociferously so. Esp. by my partner in Blood
Meridian lust, Harold Bloom. |
|
Great
Books |
David
Denby |
Got
halfway through it in 1999, was loving it, got distracted. |
|
J
R |
William
Gaddis |
Consensus
recommendation. |
|
Speedboat |
Renata
Adler |
Started
it, put it down. Want to pick it up. |
|
A
Frolic Of His Own |
William
Gaddis |
Have
taken two shots at this... |
|
OLDIE OF THE DAY
(or Sennight, or Fortnight, or However Damn Often I Feel Like Changing It Which
is Admittedly Almost Anything But Daily)
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