false 37 80 32 true 5875523 read 9 true 3760051 currently-reading 39 true 3760050 to-read http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/72438492 Go Now (Paperback) by Richard Hell
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/72438476 Godlike (Paperback) by Richard Hell
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/70576471 Wiseguy (Mass Market Paperback) by Nicholas Pileggi
Picked the puppy up at Webster's for a fair price and just ripped through it like it was a bag of chips. Much of the movie's dialog and narration is pulled straight from the book. There are also some elements of Pileggi's saga of Henry Hill that understandably didn't fit into the compression made necessary by great cinema. Nothing challenging to a reader here at all, but a fun sled ride for sure, particularly if you dug the movie. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/63128754 Mollie's review of The Alchemist
by Paulo Coelho

Then why did you give it two stars? That's a one star or none star statement in my book. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/62000700 to: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Hardcover) by Milan Kundera
When I read this book more than ten years ago, I recalled enjoying it immensely and recommending it strongly to a few other folks with whom I chatted about books and writing. During a recent road trip to New England, I decided to give it a reread.

What has always stuck with me from the first reading is Kundera's explanation of how "men who pursue a multitude of women fit neatly into two categories." Namely, the lyrical and the epic. Tomas, the polite but prodigious womanizer who is one of five main characters in the book, is of the latter variety.

What disturbed me a little was just how much of this novel I had failed to retain. I'm glad something moved me to return to these pages for it really is a supremely beautiful and balanced novel. "The personal is political" is, I believe, a popular feminist saying. After reading what the reality of the communist takeover of Czechoslovakia meant for the handful of characters Kundera has living it--variously escaping or coping with the oppression in their own way--I'm left with the sense that a more accurate saying might be "The personal trumps the political," even though the former cannot escape being played out in the environment of the latter.

Although Tomas and his lover and eventual wife, Tereza, are the central couple of the story. Sabina and Franz play an important role, too. While reading it, I was sad that they might only be an interlude, but both returned--Sabina separated from Franz but Franz, in a fascinatingly tragic way, not quite separated from Sabina--to bring closure to their part in this symphonic masterpiece.

I half recall some curmudgeonly writer stating, either in his writing or in an interview, that books of philosophy are for writers who don't have the guts to tackle a novel. At one time, I felt like I understood what he meant by that, but I don't think I've ever read a novel that so wonderfully and seamlessly expresses philosphical, psychological and politcal ideas as part of the story it tells, rather than merely appends those ideas to the story.

It was only during the penultimate chapter entitled The Grand March that I felt Kundera began to come across as more didactic than engrossing and risked abandoning his story for the sake of expressing his ideas, especially during his mini-manifesto on "kitsch and shit", but only slightly so and, in this reader's view, he righted the ship by the end of the chapter.

I've done one or two of those "novels you'll always remember yada yada yada" list things on Facebook recently and never thought to include this one, but I've now re-experienced the novel in all its glory and would count it in such company easily. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/59503090 Nixonland: America's Second Civil War and the Divisive Legacy of Richard Nixon, 1965-1972. (Hardcover) by Rick Perlstein
bookshelves: to-read
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/59264958 to: Sing Me Back Home: Love, Death, and Country Music (Hardcover) by Dana Jennings
In this book Jennings accomplished several feats that surprised and satisfied me as a reader. He stoked my desire to listen more closely (or for the very first time) to the country songs he so lovingly explicates in each of the loosely thematic chapters. He made convincing connections between the music he celebrates and the autobiographical details from his rural New Hampshire childhood of poverty, violence and a homespun "oh, fuck it" fatalism. He captures a slice of indigenous American culture that--if it even exists in some form today--is no doubt far less dramatic and interesting now that several big takeovers by the iron tyrant of corporate hegemony and the grip of reality television's tentacles have knocked and squeezed far too much of the piss and vinegar out of the generational heirs of the doomed yet at times noble folks who listened to (and made) this music between the '50s and '70s in this here United States.

Jennings, who writes these memories as a prodigal son as much "escaped from" as "returned to" this world, would no doubt agree with (but seems to tread only lightly on) the points that poverty sucks, domestic violence is criminal and exuberant if not random adultery is not all that healthy for family life. But he's persuasive, for me at least, in the overall apologia he evokes for this world, which might boil down to a familiarly lumpen prole three pronged defense: (1) Who can completely blame his people for trying to get their kicks when, where and while they could since they suffered in the shadows of the rich who they worked for and were alienated from a bland middle class who spit in his tribes' general direction? (2) Most importantly, they transcended their lot in life through music--sometimes sweet, sometimes sublime and sometimes shit-kicking--the likes of which could once be heard on the radio as a matter of day to day reality rather than an exercise in nostalgia or almost always too precious revivalism. And, (3) the rarely trumped, starkly evident fact that at least they weren't pussies.

I had two problems with the book, although probably neither will prevent me from a reread down the line. It was, to use that all-purpose term of many a critic, an "uneven" work. Sometimes his prose moves from a vignette from his childhood to the story of a song without the kind of connective tissue or transitional thought that could have made the book truly great rather than really good. In other words, it lacked seamlessness and airtight organization enough to invite browsing through and cherry picking certain passages rather than riveting me as the rader to the flow of one sentence into the other. Also, in the wake of what has been revealed and debated about James Frey's A Million Little Pieces and Augusten Burroughs' Running with Scissors, I couldn't help at times wondering if Jennings didn't liberally embellish some of his autobiographic vignettes. It's a no-win reservation to bring to the experience of reading the book, however, because how would one ever know for sure? And even if some of these slices of life aren't exactly true, I grew up within enough proximity of the world he describes to know they could be.

If you love popular music, good writing about it and a prose style that is as much heart (and sweat, grit, piss, blood) as it is brains, but yet doesn't sacrifice the latter for the former, you should give this one a whirl. Me? I'm going to go back to listening to Johnny Cash's first album and--as much as Jennings' poppa would have thought this statement candy assed (presuming he could fathom what it meant)--download some Merle Haggard, Porter Wagoner and Webb Pierce. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/48848483 Kimberlie's review of Pippi Longstocking (Puffin Modern Classics)
by Astrid Lindgren

Mark wrote: "Interesting comments. Not all characters, even characters in fiction for children, should be trapped into being positive or instructive role models. We read for observation and fascination as much ..."

Interesting . . . I think I've all but given up on instruction except in very small doses or when cornered. But you've got me thinking about the whole concept at least for a little while.

Peace!

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