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April 22
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John
gave
to:
The Boy Detective Fails (Punk Planet Books)
by Joe Meno
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my rating:
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read in April, 2008
John said:
"A year ago, I was going through this phase where I read several books about angry young men who stewed in their arrested adolescence and showed no desire to move past that station in their lives (Updike, Baldwin, Bellows). This unique novel by Joe Me...more
A year ago, I was going through this phase where I read several books about angry young men who stewed in their arrested adolescence and showed no desire to move past that station in their lives (Updike, Baldwin, Bellows). This unique novel by Joe Meno is kind of the tentative next step beyond. Our protagonist is Billy, an Encyclopedia Brown-ish boy detective who, as an adult in his late 20s, reemerges into society after spending years institutionalized. He is still coping with his sister's suicide, he is aghast at the cruel world surrounding him on all sides, and somewhere in its cloudy, sinister Gotham City-ish locales (I believe Meno actually calls one of the story's cities "Gotham," but I can't say for sure as I immediately upon finishing lent this book to my friend Andre), he learns about love for the first time. To say much more would really take away the joy of rediscovering the innocence and sweetness Meno embeds beneath heartbreak and tragedy. Suffice it to say, it's a novel that makes death less terrifying and the embracement of adulthood inspiring....less
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John
gave
to:
The Optimist's Daughter: A Novel By (Hardcover)
by Eudora Welty
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read in March, 2008
John said:
"Lyrical and medatitve to the point of being somewhat obtuse, Eudora Welty's Pultizer-winning 1972 short novel follows a woman named Laurel who returns to her New Orleans home, first to deal with her ailing father, then to help conduct his funeral and...more
Lyrical and medatitve to the point of being somewhat obtuse, Eudora Welty's Pultizer-winning 1972 short novel follows a woman named Laurel who returns to her New Orleans home, first to deal with her ailing father, then to help conduct his funeral and arrange his estate. Throughout, she is made to deal with her stepmother, Fay, a trophy wife his father met through the legal world who is several years her junior. The two do not get along, firstly due to the natural tension that eminates when one's father replaces one's late mother, and secondly because Fay comes from uncouth and uncertain Texas roots. The dynamic between them is interesting, but rather than confront it, the passive Laurel retreats into naval-gazing, reliving her childhood, pondering what she knows of her parents' childhood and courtship, racking her brain to determine how things got the way they did and whether they were really all that rosy to begin with. In the end, we're left with no answers to her internal dialogue, nor have we had anything of note unfold in the present, leaving us with a portrait of a confused woman's thought process and little else....less
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John
marked as to-read:
How German Is It = Wie Deutsch Ist Es: A Novel (Paperback)
by Walter Abish
bookshelves:
to-read
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John
gave
to:
Angela's Ashes (Hardcover)
by Frank McCourt
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read in February, 2008
John said:
"Overpraised and insubstantive, the first installment in Frank McCourt's memoir cycle, Angela's Ashes, is mostly based around such an obvious cycle that its mind-numbing: "Times were tough and we were on the dole. Me father drank and came ...more
Overpraised and insubstantive, the first installment in Frank McCourt's memoir cycle, Angela's Ashes, is mostly based around such an obvious cycle that its mind-numbing: "Times were tough and we were on the dole. Me father drank and came home late at night waking us up and making us swear we'd die for Ireland. Me mother and me father fought and he shaped up. Got a job, but nobody liked him because he was from the dirty north. So he drank his first Friday's paycheck, was late to work on Saturday, and the boss fired him. So we was back on the dole. Times were tough." Seriously, 300-odd pages of this, on loop. The more gripping sequences are in the beginning, when the McCourts first arrive in Ireland and are so sickly that it seems like at least two children die per chapter. You almost had to wonder why they don't, I dunno, just STOP REPRODUCING, but I guess I'm not that Catholic and thus can't understand. Anyways, it's harrowing and heavy, and most important, hasn't become a pattern yet. I was able to hang with this part. But once the last child dies, about 70 pages in, and the story shifts moods from ultra-depressing to whimsical for a while ("me neighbor wanted me to dance for a few pence, but I was so poor I only had one shoe, so I could not dance properly. Och, it was a jolly spectacle!"), and it's just the above sequence on repeat, I simply had a struggle understanding why the bloody hell this book won a Pulitzer. I suppose it presents a brutal picture of poverty in Ireland in the early 20th century, the prejudices and sufferings that result from it. And it subtly comments on the senseless bitterness of the IRE / UK divide. But, really, I've read Frank McCourt derivatives (Damian McNichol, for example) who are more poignant and less didactic than this novel. Worst was the conclusion; young adult Frank arrives back in the U.S., and sleeps with the neglected wife of a WWII vet on his first night in the country. "Isn't it great, this America?" his travel companion asks. "'Tis." Frank responds. What the hell? ...less
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John
gave
to:
Belfast Diary: War as a Way of Life (Paperback)
by John Conroy
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read in March, 2008
John said:
"One of the points made early in this book is that the Ireland-Northern Ireland Protestant-Catholic thing is not really understood by most people. It's true...my understanding of the conflict (even after reading McCourt, mwah) was that Ireland was Cat...more
One of the points made early in this book is that the Ireland-Northern Ireland Protestant-Catholic thing is not really understood by most people. It's true...my understanding of the conflict (even after reading McCourt, mwah) was that Ireland was Catholic, Northern Ireland was Protestant, and the two didn't like each other. Not even close. Written by a sociologist / historian / journalist who spent several years living in a Belfast Catholic ghetto, War as A Way of Life explains how the conflict is hugely more complicated than all that, extending first to Catholics in Northern Ireland, and then both sides in the UK, explaining with great clarity who the hell the IRA is and what their beef is, and how they're only the most well-known of some dozen or so paramilitary orginaztions operating during what he constanly refers to as "the troubles." Conroy really tells how all these acronyms and vague proclimations really affected life at the ground level, giving the greatest insight I've ever read into one of the biggest cultural-political conflicts of our time....less
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John
gave
to:
The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global (Cambridge Middle East Studies)
by Fawaz A. Gerges
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read in April, 2008
John said:
"One thing I learned from the class I'm taking this semester is that political scientists have no freaking clue how to write. What better way to convey complex political / idealogical issues than though hundreds of pages of rambly, chapter-long senten...more
One thing I learned from the class I'm taking this semester is that political scientists have no freaking clue how to write. What better way to convey complex political / idealogical issues than though hundreds of pages of rambly, chapter-long sentences with unnecessary asides and superfluous footnotes? Better still, repeat yourself copiously in the process! And bring up key, essential players in your narrative with minimal introduction! I've read many books and watched many films about the current goings-on in the middle east, the war on terror and whatnot, and this possibly does the poorest job I've seen of analyzing it all. Basically, the author argues that the jihadist movement was never meant to be an international phenomenon; it was focused primarily on the "near enemy" (eg. within Egypt, Iran and other middle eastern countries) and only took aim at the "far enemy" (U.S., U.K.) when it realized that it was the only way to keep its local operations afloat. And it justified this moral shift through lots of propaganda and spin that amounts to not nearly the looming threat we percieve it to be. The insights and are there, certainly, and it's a point of view that challenges the conventional wisdom regarding U.S. foreign policy. But it's poorly presented. The dreck you have to wade through to reach those insights is almost not worth it....less
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March 24
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John
gave
to:
Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography (Hardcover)
by David Michaelis
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read in March, 2008
John said:
"One of the most extensively researched, indepth artist biographies I've read...with the hundred-odd pages of source notes to back it up. Schulz delivers on the intimate portrait its subject that is promised, using scores of interviews and year...more
One of the most extensively researched, indepth artist biographies I've read...with the hundred-odd pages of source notes to back it up. Schulz delivers on the intimate portrait its subject that is promised, using scores of interviews and years of research to cobble together an indepth look into the psyche of the father of Peanuts. Michaelis seriously spends a solid chapter talking about the whole Lucy-pulling-away-the-football gag, and how it and Lucy at large are representative of Charles Schulz's fear of domineering, strong women that exists concurrently with a need to have those women in his life (a massive oversimplification from the interpretation the author posits). This insight, along with many others throughout the book, shows how heavily autobiographical Peanuts was, a point further demonstrated by the placement of many strips from across it's five-decade run throughout the biography at the rough chronological point when the strip's events are occurring. For some readers, it may destroy the perceived innocence of the characters and the strip to see how certain panels reflect, say, his marital infidelity and divorce. But to paraphrase a point that Schulz himself often makes, it is hugely naive to presume his characters are innocent....less
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February 25
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John
is currently reading:
The Leopard (Paperback)
by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
bookshelves:
currently-reading
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John
gave
to:
The Executioner's Song (Paperback)
by Norman Mailer
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my rating:
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read in February, 2008
John said:
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
So reading Norman Mailer's 1979 tome on the first state-sponsored execution carried out in the United States since the Supreme Court places a moratorium on the practice, in a book club with a bunch of NPR-listening, Slate-reading intellectuals who wouldn't even consider the possibility that capital punishment might, sometimes, in extreme instances, occaisonally be warranted - much less the idea that it should remain a fixture in our justice system - yeah, that can be pretty intense.
I'd like to hope that everybody in the group at least somewhat had their convictions challenged as much as I did.
Mailer cleverly divides the book into two halves: "Western Voices" focuses on the story of Gary Gilmore, a Colorado ex-con, his parole from prison, his alcoholism and petty theft leanings and sexual perversions, but also a side that was insanely intelligent, perceptive, sensitive and madly in love with Nicole Baker. (The Nancy to his Sid, if you will.) Mailer does not at all play down his central character's abusive, criminal, murderous failings. But the author gives as round of a picture as he possibly can (a taxing task, considering that Mailer did not pull from sources other than actual interviews for this novel, hellbent on making it "a true fiction" or whatever), in the end making us really sympathize and feel for this murderous guy, even if we don't really understand him and, nonetheless, want him to die.
Move onward to part two, "Eastern Voices," the point where the media from New York and Los Angeles and special interest causes like the NAACP and the ACLU rally to Gilmore's cause, insisting that he should not be put to death even though he accepts the guilty verdict and has no wishes to appeal. This segment of the book adds fuel to the fire of those who have leanings against mainstream broadcast media and activist cause opportunists, and I spent a lot of the section feeliing that the filmmakers and activists were all wrong, further that they were being offensively insistent in their wrongness, that Gilmore should just be allowed to accept his sentence if that's what he wanted. Mailer obviously wanted this reaction out of his readers, so he could then twist the knife in a totally different direction in an extremely detailed and graphic description of Gilmore's execution and autopsy, making even my moderate self murmur "Hmm, this is kind of barbaric."
This hasn't even scratched the surface of the depths this book gets to...which, really, are the depths that only a 1,056 page book can. But don't let the page count deter you, as it is an engrossing read, and highly impressive in that it will make you question your outlook, whatever side of the fence you fall on....less
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