The Bookhouse Boys discussion
What Else Are You Reading?
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I hope the next time I read about someone killing their child because God tells them to, it's in the new Age of Reason and it's newly ancient history.
That looks like a very interesting book, Matt, but I suspect that I'll get carried away by atheist rage if I start reading it, so I'm going to hold on for now!I'm reading for my qualifying exams coming up this May, so unfortunately there hasn't been a lot of space for fiction lately. I just finished a couple of comic books - the amazing The Frank Book and Trondheim's The Hoodoodad: The Spiffy Adventures of McConey, both of which I warmly recommend - and now I'm working on The Manara Library, Volume 1 and The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec: The Mad Scientist / Mummies on Parade. I also recently got a hold of The Name of the Wind and The Prague Cemetery, both of which I'm looking forward to reading when I get a bit of free time.
And of course, I'm always working on a few non-fiction books in the background. Right now I'm finishing up Caribbean Rum: A Social And Economic History, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815, and In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680-1783. The book on rum is entertaining but nothing spectacular, Empire of Liberty is a great description of the Early American Republic, especially for a dumb European like me, and In The Eye of All Trade is an amazing, if quite academic, book on Bermuda and Atlantic history.
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Matt wrote: "My mom sent me The Final Solution which I started today. I don't know how I missed hearing about a Chabon novel(la) about Sherlock Holmes' last case. So far, it's a great read but [spo..."I have already mentioned to you that I loved The Final Solution, but there are some sad elements. Believe it or not, though, this is not the most depressing Holmes-in-old-age tribute book I've ever read. That honor belongs to [book:A Slight Trick Of The Mind|11166641] by Mitch Cullin, which is a wonderful, beautifully written book...but is really sad.
Oh man, I can't believe that I haven't read The Final Solution! I love Holmes almost as much as I love Chabon. Has anyone read Wonder Boys? An underrated masterpiece, in my opinion.
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I wanted to mention that here because I see some parallels with Lee Stamper in Sometimes a Great Notion and Roy Dillon in The Grifters.
Lee has schemes, but they're (in his mind) righteous ones, and you can see how he's justified his actions in his own mind and doesn't realize that he's the villain until it's too late; it's Kesey who manipulates the narrative in every way he can to make readers despise the guy more and more and more (especially in the climactic scenes that show us whose arm that was at the beginning of the book).
In the case of Roy, he doesn't even really bother to justify his actions, he simply goes ahead with them to fulfill his selfish desires. It's fascinating to me to examine the way his, Moira's, and Lilly's personalities pervert tenderness and affection in such a way as to make these essential human qualities almost disgusting.
The other thing that Henchard, Lee, and Roy all have in common: They are technically, for all we may abhor them, the heroes of their stories. Because they act so abysmally, their stories are tragic, but they are without a doubt the centers of their respective narratives.
Thoughts on literary villainy? Other examples?
Big Girls Don't Cry tells the story of the 2008 presidential election from a feminist perspective. Author Rebecca Traister analyzes the disparate reactions of the public -- and especially of the mainstream media -- to Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, and Sarah Palin. Fascinating, personal, and funny -- I was reading passages aloud to my wife.I loves me some post-campaign analysis; got a bunch of Theodore H. White, Jules Witcover, and Jack Germond election postmortems on my shelf. And this book looks almost prescient, ending on how bright the political future could be for female successors to 2008's contenders -- the two names I've been seeing the most in the Romney veepstakes this week are Kelly Ayotte and Cathy McMorris Rogers.
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I just read David Grann's collection of essays, The Devil & Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness & Obsession, which I also quite enjoyed. It's a bunch of different stuff, mostly previously published pieces from The New Yorker, but they are all very well written and researched. I'll pick up The Lost City of Z when I get the chance!
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Next up is Thunderstruck, by my favorite non-fiction author Erik Larson. I'm very excited.
And then Uncle Silas and The Manual of Detection.
The Manual of Detection was a weird one for me. I felt like I should have loved it, since all of the elements and influences it drew upon were right in my wheelhouse, but ultimately it left me pretty cold. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it eventually!
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Renee bought it for me because it was on the Powell's staff picks shelf and the employee-written write-up mentioned Italo Calvino. I'll let you know what I think once I get around to it.
The Devil & Sherlock Holmes, Lost City of Z, Manual of Detection, not to mention those Simon Winchester books Devin brought up in the Grifters episode.... Aaaargh! Too many great-sounding books! And I can't afford to quit my job to read them all! Life is so unfair. >:(
So I read The Catcher in the Rye last week. I brought it to my son's soccer game on Saturday, and almost immediately a fellow soccer dad told me it changed his life. It's one of those books.I never read the book in school, at the age at which it would supposedly have had its greatest effect on me. I first read it in my late 20's, and I kinda hated it. But I decided recently to give it another shot.
Halfway through this reading, I still hated Holden. I liked Salinger's writing -- the repetitive lingo, the hypocrisy of the un-self-aware teenager -- but Jesus, the boy was insufferable. Is there a worse (non-homicidal) neighbor, classmate, or guest in literature?
At the three-quarters point, I found myself empathizing with him quite a bit. He's right, a lot of adults are phonies. And Holden's got a soft spot for kids, so he can't be all bad, right?
By the end, I really liked him. I felt awful for his sadness, his loneliness, his inadequacy. And I hoped he came out of his --
***spoiler alert?***
-- institutionalization on a more even keel.
I was reminded of subjects probably unrelated to the novel, like Ordinary People, the story of the brother who lived but maybe shouldn't have.
And I thought of Kurt Cobain a few times, probably my generation's loudest voice of disaffected youth.
Words are failing me. Suffice it to say, this was a book I didn't look forward to revisiting and ended up really moving me. I'd think I'm well past the age where this should happen...
... but I swear, that soccer dad was misting up remembering it with me last weekend.
So that's off my chest, more or less. If someone more articulate could say a few words now, I'd appreciate it.
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I liked it when I was 15, but didn't see what the big deal was. I've read it at least once every 10 years since then and each time it gets better. I still don't know why it's treated as a H.S. text.
Also, some folks mayn't know it, but this was, I believe, our first book we did as The Bookhouse Boys (before this forum) and the threads are all archived here (see TCitR threads): http://bullpenbulletinspodcast.com/fo...
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Not linking to blow off your call for discussion, just to redirect you to some of our already composed thoughts on the book. As I recall, we wrote a lot in discussing the book--probably too much to replicate here. Also, the book being fresh in our minds at the time, what's recorded there would probably be a lot more useful than what I at least could give you now.
Short answer: I adore Salinger's writing and have long marveled at its effortlessness. I can't think of another author who's ever caught the cadence and rhythm of the human voice quite so well. And Holden is the quintessential 20th century adolescent, as irritating as he is adorable, as immature as he is profound. Though I never hated the book, I would agree with you that I like the book more now than I did when I was younger... I was maybe too close to it then, or had had enough of the (to borrow Holden's favorite word) phony teenage wasteland that was all but marketed down our throats back in the '90s. Maybe it's the nostalgia talking, or maybe it's the fact that modern pop culture could use a little less ironic snark and a lot more of that lo-fi, punk rock attitude back, but I developed great affection for Holden reading him in my 30s. I think I relate more to him now than I did when I was his age.
EDIT: Jinx on the link. Shoulda knowed Matt would be on top of that!
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I agree with you guys, though. Age and distance have made this book age rather well. If anything, as adults we're even more keenly aware of how reality can trap and restrict us, of the roles we have play (often unwillingly), the sacrifices we make of our youthful dreams and ambitions. Holden is pessimistic, in some ways self-deluded, but in other ways almost prescient. And instead of identifying with him in a "fuck yeah!" kinda way, as we might if we were 15, we can see his self-destructive tendencies and the good person struggling to rise above them and it breaks our hearts.
And I'm not kidding here, Jim; your post was articulate as Hell, poignant actually, and I was moved reading it.
As the Big 3 have mentioned before me, this book struck me as a much more powerful read since I had first read it back in high school. It's the articulated voice that I think we may have wished we had as youths, but can't fully appreciate until we are older.Also, having the forum to discuss Catcher, it has given me a much more fulfilling experience and learned such narrative terms as, "unreliable narrator". To this day, I love using the term, "phony".
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Decided I would give Matt's suggestion, The Lost City of Z; a shot. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/boo...With that said, I think Matt, and hopefully others, will give, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival a read. Great non-fiction work about a wounded tiger which turns the roles of hunter and hunted on its ear. http://www.thetigerbook.com/
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Is this a case of Nature biting back? If so, I'm in!
Is this a case of Nature biting back? If so, I'm in!"Most definitely!
I found the environment to be nearly as intriguing as the drama occurring within. Vaillant does a great job describing a world that has been rarely seen by most Westerners and aptly creates the background for the motivations of its occupants, both human and otherwise.
Jeppe wrote: "I just read David Grann's collection of essays, The Devil & Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness & Obsession, which I also quite enjoyed. It's a bunch of different stuff, mostly previously pub..."So I finished
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon yesterday, and it was a really fun ride. Grann writes great and the story of Fawcett is very interesting. I had a few quibbles with the book, mainly things that usually tend to irritate me a bit in popular non-fiction works (journalists writing about themselves instead of their subjects, a bit more meat on the history etc), but overall it was a great book. Thanks for the recommendation!
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(next month's selection) The Dwarf, The Essential Alan Watts, and The Man Who Was Not With It. Yay reading! YAY BOOKS!
First, I gotta thank you guys for pointing me to the Catcher in the Rye EOC thread. I read every word, and it was pretty amazing. Kicking myself for missing reading it with you three years ago.Now I want to revisit this Michael Chabon quote that Matt served up three months ago:
(view spoiler)
I just picked up Chabon's collection of essays Maps and Legends, and the first chapter speaks to the same point. You can tell that Nabokov's Ada or Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five don't belong in the science fiction section because blue foil lettering and spaceships fail to appear on their jackets.
[A]pparently some kind of awful retailing disaster would result if all the fiction, whether set on Mars or Manhattan, concerning a private eye or an eye doctor, were shelved together...
For even the finest writer of horror or sf or detective fiction, the bookstore is a ghetto....
[When authors break out of that ghetto,] new, subtler covers are placed on these writers' books, with elegant serif typefaces. In the public libraries, the little blue circle with the rocket ship is withheld from the spine....
The book has been widely praised by mainstream critics, adopted for discussion by book clubs, chosen by the Today show. Hence it cannot be science fiction.
Ask yourself just how damned different a book has to be, on the inside, from its neighbors, to get it consigned to the genre slums at the local Barnes & Noble. More different than, say, Moby-Dick is from Mrs. Dalloway?
And when did "entertaining" become a slanderous way to describe a reading experience?
Food for thought, especially considering that I picked up the book mainly to read Chabon's thoughts on Will Eisner, on Sherlock Holmes, on Chaykin's American Flagg!
After I've burned through my Jacques Tardi reading list, I'll be checking out some more Chabon.
Apologies for the long post. Thanks for reading.
Maps and Legends is awesome! Some of the essays are a bit meandering or repetitive, but most of them are really good reading. Chabon has written quite a bit in the New York Review of Books, and his stuff is usually quite funny and alway thoughtful.
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Matt wrote: "Picked up Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism from the library today. I have been kind of obsessed with the Fox sisters since I was a kid. I was a weird kid."I think we would have been hanging out at the river banks or tree forts a lot, Matt!
Following Matt's recommendation of Alan Watts on the last episode, I recently picked up The Way of Zen and have started reading it. I've read quite a bit on Taoism and Buddhism in the past, but this book is just amazing in its clarity. Thanks for bringing it to my attention!
Aftershock by Robert Reich offers nice analysis of how the American economy got where it is, and insanely impractical solutions for how to get out of it.Problem: The rich get exponentially richer while the middle class and poor do worse and worse. More and more, super-rich individuals and corporations use their wealth, abetted by Congress and the Supreme Court, to reduce their tax burden, and make the public pay for their losses while keeping their profits for themselves.
Reich's proposed solutions include:
*Medicare for all;
*a "reverse income tax" by which the federal government provides a sliding-scale lump-sum payment to poor families; it's like the Earned Income Tax Credit, only more so;
*public school vouchers, amount inversely proportional to income, so public schools would have to compete for low-income students;
*and full public campaign financing to stem political corruption.
Try to imagine any of these proposals becoming law in your lifetime. Even incremental corporatized "fixes" like Dodd-Frank and the Affordable Care Act are despised by millions.
Short of mass armed insurrection by some sort of bizarre Occupy-Tea Party coalition, our current system will never see such sweeping change come to pass.
Much as I admire Reich, this book just left a sour taste in my mouth, and a deeper despair for our future.
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It's stuff like this that makes me feel like a damn Republican. Giving people an incentive to be poor is a very bad idea.
Some of you may have noticed that I recently added a book of Christian devotions to my to-read list. And some of you may also know that this is the sort of book I would not typically be reading.But in this case I'm making an exception. This particular collection, called Wings of the Morning, was written by my ninety-year-old grandmother, Natalie Pierce. She's one of my favorite people on Earth; my only daughter bears her name.
So I just wanted to brag on her for a sec. First time published author. At 90!
Yea, Nana!!!
Jim wrote: "Some of you may have noticed that I recently added a book of Christian devotions to my to-read list. And some of you may also know that this is the sort of book I would not typically be reading.B..."
Wow, truly fantastic! Very inspirational, indeed.
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That's awesome! I love stories like this. :)
Dave wrote: "That's awesome! I love stories like this. :)"Robert wrote: "Wow, truly fantastic! Very inspirational, indeed. "
Jason wrote: "Go, Mrs. Pierce!"
Thanks. guys. Where's my Karma button?
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You didn't have Health II in yr high school, huh?
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Also, still loving up Studs Terkel's Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression and heartily recommend it to anyone interested in American history (and a possible future).
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Okay, so that didn't stick. This book had a wonderful middle act and complete shitty beginning and end. I wish the first 100 pages were given as an italicized synopsis at the beginning and it ended somewhere after the second hundred pages. Ugh.
Borrowed Love is Not Constantly Wondering if You Are Making the Biggest Mistake of Your Life from a friend who bought it at Floating World. I think he bought it because of the cover. I was excited to hear it was an anonymous Portland author writing about his relationship with his alcoholic girlfriend.
Many of you like scary stories this time of year. I recommend Vultures' Picnic by Greg Palast, throwback journo, hybrid of Edward Murrow and Sam Spade. Forget about your wooden shards through the eyeball or ripped-off faces -- this shit is fucking terrifying.This riveting, revelatory book is best described as pulp non-fiction. Greg Palast's prose style takes some getting used to -- it seems disjointed, until he connect the dots for you; it's profane and informal, yet packed with original reportage and analysis. It reads like a conspiracy theory, but it's horrifyingly factual, and all too credible.
Palast crosses the globe many times over and weaves his narrative through his decades of experience, connecting events that seem utterly disparate. He includes snippets of his personal history, and a supporting cast of courageous whistleblowers and intrepid co-crusaders, one of whom -*spoilers*- he ends up proposing to.
Corporations, and the humans who run them, have one guiding principle: minimize risk, meaning maximize profit. It may be more economical to have your pet Congresscritters pass new laws than abide by existing ones. If you're gonna sell derivatives of shitty sub-prime mortgages, make sure you're hedged against the certainty that they will soon be worthless. Settling lawsuits with the families of dead miners or of children poisoned by toxic runoff is always cheaper than taking proper safety precautions. And so on. The toll on individuals, societies, and our planet need not be factored into these equations. The free market is always right.
You may have heard that if corporations actually were people, they'd be sociopaths. You can say the same about their human avatars. And they almost always walk away scot free.
Most memorable idea in the book, from a political action POV:
When you hear the word "deregulation," think "decriminalization."
If it's illegal to charge your customers tens of millions for services they never received, just get your lobbyist army over to Capitol Hill and write legislation making your crime legal. (This actually happened and, I'm sure, still does.)
Amazon link: Vultures' Picnic is available as an "enhanced" e-book, including videos of the author at work, and copies of the brought-to-light confidential corporate memos that would, in a just world, have resulted in jail time and punitive damages nearing infinity. Since I've returned my hardcover to the library, I'll be buying the Kindle version soon.
Greg Palast, genuine investigative journalist, has been doing this for a long time. I commend his website to your attention.
Apologies for the lengthy post, although I do hope it held your interest. Now I'm off to ignore the presidential debate.
Good night, and good luck.
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Same goes for your book, Dave.
I started The Phantom of the Opera on the plane today. I was digging the intro chapters, but the white noise of a plane cabin always makes me nod like a junkie. I liked what I read so far.
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Your posts always do, and this was no exception. I agree with you: that shit is the real horror in this world.
Matt wrote: "Great write-up, Jim. I'm adding it to my list, but going to need a break after the Hedges book I recently finished."Yeah, I probably shouldn't've gone from Vultures' Picnic straight into Empire of Illusion. Dumbass.
Chris Hedges spends a lot of pages lost in the weeds of his argument through the first four sections. But he brings it home with a devastating conclusion detailing the loss of America's democratic ideals, and of its economy based on innovation and manufacturing. Since we can no longer afford bread, the power elite now offers only circuses.
I do wish the book had been much more tightly constructed, and I spotted one embarrassing error of fact -- where are the Alluisis when you need them? -- but overall it was a satisfying enough screed... I mean, read.
_____________
I have books by Hedges and Palast waiting to be perused, but Jesus God, do I need a break. Just started Sarah Vowell's Take the Cannoli for my mental health. After that, it's back to novels for a while...
...one of these being Orwell's merry romp, 1984. My working hypothesis is that we're currently living in an amalgam of 1984 and The Masque of the Red Death, in which the Inner Party oligarchs lie to the Proles and hoard their wealth behind locked gates while the outside world dies screaming.
......
......
But I could be wrong. It's only a theory.
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Jason wrote: "Do you write anything, Jim, besides forum posts? If not, maybe you should."You're saying my posts are getting too long, aren't you? You're not wrong.
I sincerely appreciate the compliment, Jason. But no, I'm just gonna keep hacking it out here, trying not to embarrass myself too badly, and being unhappy with the results just about every time.
The Bookhouse Boys
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Seriously, though, all I really remember was the main character was a cipher with an ugly mug, some lovely descriptions of the harsh environs, and being kinda done with the plot halfway through the book (but finishing it anyway).
But you're reading Angels and Insects. Cool. I loved the movie. We'll have to talk about the novel on the show. :)