In the Lake of the Woods

Tim O'Brien is a great writer. It's not just in the actual mechanics of his writing; it's in the tone he is able to set. In the novel In the Lake of the Woods, the tone is regret, loss and sadness tinged with mystery and the unknown.

The novel is about a Minnesota politician, John Wade, who has just lost a Senate election. He and his wife Kathy move to a lake house in northern Minnesota to get away from the stress of the election and to recover after a bitter disappointment. O'Brien unfolds the Wade's story in flashbacks, from John's childhood (and the development of his alter-ego, Sorcerer) to his meeting and early days with Kathy, to his war experiences in Vietnam and on to the multitude of secrets the two share.

One morning, John wakes up and Kathy is gone. After consulting with the friendly older couple who live nearby, the Rasmussens, he decides to report it to the police. For two weeks search parties are organized and John becomes a figure of increasing interest to the police. Frightening flashbacks lead the reader to believe that John may have killed Kathy.

O'Brien skillfully weaves several plausible scenarios for Kathy's disappearance. The ending is ambiguous, but this book stayed with me for a long time after reading.

O'Brien's novel The Things They Carried was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and he is probably the pre-eminent novelist of the Vietnam generation working today. I have also read July, July, which is also excellent.

This book has overtones of mystery, but I certainly would not consider it a 'mystery novel'. I first read this 3 or 4 years ago and am going to re-read it soon.

Cigarettes

This is an unpleasant book about unpleasant people.

In my opinion, the key to enjoying a novel is to find a character you can identify with or at least relate to. It doesn't matter if the action is set in the past, present or future, whether it is in the United States, Russia, or outer space, whether the characters are male, female, or even human. There just needs to be a point of entry for our empathy. Harry Mathew's Cigarettes did not provide this point of entry for me.

The novel covers a span of 30 or so years and the action jumps around between decades as it focuses on the relationships between a large cast of characters, all of whom could be classified as the idle rich of New York and environs. While the plot revolves around a painting that unites the characters in one way or another, the book is really an opportunity for Mathews to explore the intermingled relationships between these self-obsessed and unlikable characters. Each chapter focuses on two of the characters (and are titled as such: "Walter and Elizabeth", "Allen and Maud", etc.). Their social anxieties, sexual practices, and personal failings are explored ad nauseum. The names were so similar I began to get confused about who was who (Allen, Owen, Pauline, Priscilla, etc.)

Evidently Mathews belongs to a French salon that experiments by using algorithms and other mathematical concepts in order to create plot structures. It is an interesting experiment, but to be honest, I could care less. The artifice is exposed when there is nothing else there to interest the reader (or, at least, this reader).

Mathew's style is very sparse. Large events are covered in a few sentences and there is relatively little dialogue. I felt like I was reading this book forever.

If I may borrow a joke from someone on another blog, Cigarettes was, indeed, a drag.

The Maltese Falcon

Here he is in his full glory: the hard-boiled private detective, a man of action and a man who follows his own code. While he may be a throwback, the character of Sam Spade epitomized what it meant to be a man in a man's world: drinker of liquor, fighter of men, lover of woman, and solver of crimes (and not necessarily in that order). I don't know much about the reaction to Dashiell Hammett's novel when it was first released, but I imagine that it was not considered proper literature in 1929. The book features a main character who is fairly non-plussed about the murder of his partner, is revealed to have been having an affair with that partner's wife, drinks, seduces young women, and routinely operates outside the authority of the police. In addition, there is a subplot that revolves around homosexuality and scenes that include Spade looking at nude women. No wonder this stuff was called pulp fiction!

The story itself follows Spade's attempts to figure out why so many people are interested in the titular bird, a sculpture that is clearly of value. It opens with the classic set up: a beautiful young woman enters the office of the private eye looking for help in something that she is none too truthful about. Double crosses, imminent personal danger, international miscreants and meddling cops come and go in this textbook plot. The real value of the story is the introduction of one of the most indelible characters in literature and film, Sam Spade himself. Although Hammett wrote other detective novels, this is the only one that features Spade.

Spade is almost symbolic of America's image of itself from the time it was written. Here was a new type of hero- one who rejected the old ways of doing things but still operated on a code of personal honor that was unwavering. While pre-World War I America may have been symbolized by the cowboy, the post war years could similarly be looked at through the prism of Spade; a maverick nation that bucked the trends and brought into being a new way of operating. In addition, Spade presented an ideal for American manhood and the American spirit. He was a solo operator who did things his own way, accepting the consequences for his own decisions. Obviously, Bogart defined the role for the silver screen and other authors and filmmakers have been following the template ever since.

Reading the book posed a challenge in some ways because so many of the plot devices and situations, which were undoubtedly new and fresh at the time, have become such hackneyed cliches it is almost impossible to read with a straight face. Still, if you can place it in its proper context, the novel is fast paced and suspenseful, and is a definite classic for anyone interested in detective fiction.

The Original Hardy Boys series

I'm sure that my experience with the Hardy Boys stories will be a mirror image of that of millions of other people who were raised between the 50s and the 80s. Although the Boys have been around since the 1920s, the books were overhauled in the 50s or 60s in order to get rid of some of the anachronisms that abounded in the earlier titles.

As most people with any interest know, Franklin W. Dixon was actually a nom de plume for a prolific hack writer who also birthed the Nancy Drew series. Only the first twenty books or so were written by the original author, after which they were produced from an anonymous stable of the publisher's writers. Think Brill Building for teen detective lit. The 'classic' series ran for 58 volumes, beginning with The Tower Treasure and ending with The Sting of the Scorpion.

It is easy for me to trace my love of reading back to the Hardy Boys series. As a kid growing up in the 1970s, I lived for these books. The stories had enough action and mystery to be engrossing, but were never frightening. The brothers, Frank and Joe, were just older enough to seem smart and independent without being total aliens to a pre-teen. Frank was sober and steady, Joe was impetuous and action-driven, giving all kids a behavior role model to look up to. Their friends ranged from Chet, the fat farm kid, to Phil Cohen, my first exposure to a Jewish character. I learned lots and lots of vocabulary from these books; words like 'sinister', 'jalopy', and 'estranged' entered my vocabulary.

My mom used to buy new titles for me as an allowance. Instead of cash for doing my chores, I was rewarded with a book. To this day I think of books as a special reward. Thanks mom! This series probably also was the root of my 'completist' nature when it comes to authors and artists.

My favorite titles? Danger on Vampire Trail, The Mystery of Cabin Island, and The Disappearing Floor. As time went by, I began to wonder how the guys could have solved 58 mysteries while still being 17 and 18. How many summer breaks and spring breaks did this school have? That was the beginning of the creep of cynicism that separates our childhood from the later years. I eventually sold the whole collection at a garage sale when I was 12 or 13, another milestone on the road to something. Still, I like to pick one up every now and then and reread it, and when I do, it still takes me back.

The Shining

Stephen King obviously needs no introduction. An amazing publishing phenomenon, King continues to produce a fairly consistent amount of work, even if he isn't quite as prolific as his 80s and 90s heyday. I have probably read just about everything he's written, with the exception of a few of the later books and the Dark Tower series. King is the source of controversy amongst literary types; his pulpy plots are a little too 'supermarket' for the snobs. Still, I count him as amongst one of the finest storytellers in literary history, and isn't that really what novels are all about? In addition, King's writing has grown richer and richer over the years as he's dabbled in many styles outside the pale of traditional horror.

The Shining was King's third or fourth novel, and arguably the best of the earliest part of his career. I won't go deep into plot details, as anyone with even a passing interest in King's work has probably read the book. Still, the creepy story of a troubled man and his family wintering as caretakers in a secluded Colorado hotel still has enough fright in its pages to keep me up at night. The book contains several hallucinatory and surreal passages and imparts a genuine sense of claustrophobia, much like what the characters in the story were experiencing. Stanley Kubrick's film version has its detractors, but I feel it holds up very well over time, even with Nicholson's over the top performance and the slightly different ending.

It is important to remember that authors like Dickens were often dismissed as hacks in their own time. I believe that King's best work will stand up over time in the same way as that of the most beloved storytellers from the past.

The Corrections

Jonathan Franzen raised a fuss a few years ago when Oprah selected this National Book Award Winner as an entry in her famous book club. Franzen objected, indicating that Oprah's club members were lemming-like in their voracious appetite for any literature that was O-approved. Oprah withdrew the selection, no doubt instantly erasing millions in potential income from the balance sheets of both Franzen and his publishers. The book was a major best-seller anyway.

The Corrections is about the Lambert family, a brood brought up traditionally in the American midwest. While there apparently is nothing terribly special about this respectable middle class clan, their lives are unraveling terribly by the time the children reach adulthood. Father Alfred is battling against dementia and Parkinson's; his wife Enid is barely coping and wondering why her children are so distant. Son Gary is clinically depressed, living with his family in Pennsylvania and wondering where it all went wrong. Chip is a disgraced college professor, sponging off of girlfriends and wondering where his next break will come from. Denise is a well-known chef whose personal life involves breaking up marriages by seducing the male and female parts of the couple. As Alfred slides towards complete dementia, Enid longs for one last Christmas, with all of the family together in the family home. Sounds like a set up for a tale about a bunch of lovable losers who somehow manage to maintain our compassion and empathy. But......

I never really came to care about any of the Lamberts, with the possible exception of Alfred, an absentee father and non-communicative spouse. Alfred takes a bit of the brunt of blame for all of his family's problems- unfairly so in my estimation. While there are some great vignettes and the dialogue is strong, the story is just disjointed enough that it tested my patience. And I like big, sprawling, all-over- the-place novels as a general rule, but I have to care about the characters, and this time out I did not.

One of the problems is that Franzen can be too clever by half. He is clearly extremely intelligent, and much of the book is very well-researched. He writes with authority on a number of topics, from railroad engineering to commercial kitchens. Unfortunately for me, a lot of it came off as show, and did little to move the story or the characters forward. The book could have used substantial editing.

While I wouldn't classify it as a waste of time (and, after all, the book has been very successful; clearly someone likes it), I had high expectations which The Corrections failed to live up to.

The Story of Lucy Gault

This novel, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2002, is a haunting story of missed connections and the long-lasting effects our impetuous mistakes can have on our lives.

Lucy Gault is a young girl living an idyllic life with her mother and father in 1920s Ireland. Because her mother is English, the family has been targeted by Irish activists and lives under the threat of violence. Her father, Captain Gault, decides it is time to move the family to England. In order to delay or postpone the move, Lucy decides to hide in the woods on moving day. Through a series of plausible coincidences, she is believed to have drowned in the sea. Heartbroken, her mother and father move away, wandering Europe aimlessly, and more important, without permanent address.

In actuality, Lucy was injured in the woods, and is found barely alive after her parents are gone. So begins a lifetime of patience, of waiting, of self-denial, of loneliness, and of forgiveness. Thematically, it reminds me of McEwan's Atonement.

William Trevor hits all the right notes while touching on many major themes in this book. There are a lot of big ideas, but he does not hit you over the head with them. The words seep into you and imbue the reader with a sense of melancholy, but of continuous hope- much the same feelings that Lucy experiences throughout the novel. Very skillfully plotted and hard to put down.

The Invention of Curried Sausage

The Invention of Curried Sausage represents exactly why I love reading books from the list of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. I have almost no doubt that without the list, I'd have never discovered this gem of a book. For every dog on the list (see: Choke), there are several great finds (see: this book).

This short novel by Uwe Timm, and translated from the German by Leila Vennewitz, has a whole bunch of Big Themes wrapped up in one small and extremely readable package. The book deals with a man who spends his afternoons in Hamburg visiting with an old family neighbor and listening to her story about how she invented currywurst, which is the national 'fast food' or street food of Germany. The woman, Lena Brucker, begins her tale in the waning days of World War II in Hamburg. Conditions there are, as you can imagine, rather dire. Lena, never a party member or sympathizer, is hoping the war will end soon so life can begin to get back to some sense of normalcy. She meets a younger soldier who is scheduled to head to one of the fast-falling fronts and has basically been assigned to become cannon fodder. She decides to conceal him in her third floor apartment, where they become lovers and she becomes his only link to the outside world.

As the war ends and the British occupy Hamburg, Lena deceives the young soldier into thinking that the war is still ongoing so that he will not leave. She has fallen in love with him and she is sure that once he can return to his young family she will be left alone. Her husband has been missing in service for years and her children are far away.

I'll let the reader discover how and why all of this has to do with the invention of curried sausage. The novella tackles themes of duty, loneliness, conditional ethics, and the horror of the Nazi campaign for those who were willing and unwitting collaborators. I liked this book so much, I'm going to try making some curried sausage for myself.

Fat Kid Rules the World

One of the great things about having a girlfriend who is a librarian is the amount of Young Adult literature I've been able to read. As a whole, YA lit has come a long way in the past 20 or 30 years. When I was a teenager, there was Judy Blume for the girls and S.E. Hinton for the boys and it seemed like that was about it. Today, there are a multitude of choices for kids of every age, ethnicity, proclivity, and set of interests.

Fat Kid Rules the World by K.L. Going is one of the best books I've read for a long while, and that goes beyond its YA designation. The story is about Troy, a severely overweight teen who lives in New York City with his father and brother. His brother is everything Troy is not: popular, athletic, and outgoing. Into this black hole that his life has become enters Curt MacCrae, a lower-east side guitar legend and high school drop out. Curt is emaciated, troubled, and may or may not be on drugs. He and Troy strike up an odd friendship when Curt recruits Troy to play drums for his new band. Troy's complete and total inability to play doesn't deter Curt, and soon Troy begins to go through a transformation, as does Curt.

The character of Curt is clearly inspired by Kurt Cobain, and the writing on bands, music, and punk rock is very well done. The story is essentially about how two troubled individuals can overcome major obstacles through their belief in each other. While the summary may make it sound like a 'feel good' book, or something treacly, it isn't- the characters are handled with realism and in a mostly unsentimental way. The great thing about this book is that adults can enjoy the story as much as teens. I would recommend it for high school aged kids. There is some language and some situations that may raise questions, but that is never a bad thing.

Choke

Chuck Palahniuk is certainly no stranger to controversy or success. Fight Club was an international sensation, and the film, featuring Ed Norton and Brad Pitt is a certified cult classic. I enjoyed Fight Club, but I can't say the same for Choke, Palahniuk's most recent best-seller and movie adaptation.

The story revolves around the character of Victor Mancini, a generally unlikable sex addict and scam artist. In order to support his mother, who suffers from late stage dementia, he resorts to pretending to choke to death in restaurants. The patrons who save him invariably end up sending him money for years to come, because he has somehow given their lives meaning. Or something like that. The psychobabble is pretty dense in this book, and I was never convinced that Palahniuk had the slightest idea what he was talking about. There are the usual assorted weirdos and cast-offs in Victor's life, including his rehab buddies and co-workers at a colonial theme park.

Several of the vignettes in the book are clearly designed to shock and succeed at doing so. Victor's encounter with a woman in an airplane bathroom and with a fantasy rape sequence made me nauseous. I have no problem with 'adult' or controversial or even distasteful subject matter, if it is done to a purpose besides just attempting to be shocking. This book didn't make it on any level for me, and to be honest, its appeal escapes me. The trailer for the film I saw looks like they are playing it as more of a comedy, which might work. As it stands, this book was a big disappointment.

The House of the Seven Gables

With the exception of Edgar Allen Poe, I have to admit that I have read very little by the great American writers of the 19th Century. My knowledge of Melville, Cooper, Hawthorne and others has been tempered by my great appreciation for their British brethren of the same time period. The House of the Seven Gables is the first (and so far only) Nathaniel Hawthorne I have read.

I don't know what I was waiting for. This is a great novel which I enjoyed very much. The story concerns the residents of the titular house, the once mighty and now down at the heel Pynchone family. The spinster Hepzibah is the only resident of the rotting old home save for a border, Holgraves, who is an artist. Legend has it that the progenitor of the Pynchone family, several generations previous, stole the land from another family and had the patriarch condemned as a witch. The latter cursed the former, and ever since, strange deaths have occurred at the house.

Soon, Hepzibah's solitary life is altered as first her distant cousin Phoebe, and then her mentally disturbed brother Clifford join her and her border. Phoebe manages to bring light and relative happiness to the shadowy existence of her older cousins, and begins a chaste romance with Holgraves. The idyll is broken up only by the infrequent visits of the wealthy and evil cousin Jaffrey, a local judge who for some reason terrifies Clifford and Hepzibah. Phoebe leaves for a short period of time, and soon the old curse of the house revisits the present occupants.

Hawthorne, in his forward, lets us know right away that the moral of the story is that the sins of the fathers can and will be brought down on the heads of those who come later. The house, a grand edifice when it was new, is a powerful symbol of the ruin that can befall once proud families when wealth and prosperity and built upon deception and greed.

Although the book runs for 270+ pages, very little in the way of action occurs. While that hardly sounds like an endorsement, the truth of the matter is that Hawthorne's prose is so amazing that the reader never feels bored by the lack of a steamroller plot. He spends an entire chapter in the company of a corpse over the course of a night, and his descriptions and intimate way of addressing the reader will put a chill up your spine. There is a great strain of the supernatural in this book, and it is easy to understand why Hawthorne was such a favorite of his contemporaries Melville, Thoreau, and Alcott.

White Teeth

I'm not sure how I missed White Teeth when it was published in 2000. It seems to have garnered almost universal praise from critics and readers alike, and was turned into an acclaimed mini-series in Great Britain. White Teeth was the debut novel from Zadie Smith.

White Teeth has many characters, all of whom interact on a variety of levels, but at the heart of it all are Archie and Samad, friends who met during World War II who have continued to be friends. The novel jumps back and forth in time, focusing first on Archie, then on Samad, on Archie's daughter Irie, and then on Samad's twin sons Magid and Millat. The characters' lives are intertwined, allowing us to meet Archie's wife Clara and Samad's wife Alsana, both an entire generation younger than their husbands and with different views on the world. Archie and Samad are both, in their own ways, stuck in the post-war promise of England, and have trouble adapting to modern times and modern problems. Indeed, much of the plot revolves around the constant push and pull of the various traditionalists as they rub up against more modern times.

Their progeny further complicate things. Irie is an independent thinker with a strong pull towards a past that her mother would rather forget. Magid and Millat take different paths (due to an astonishing action by Samad) with Millat embracing the lifestyle of a young English hood and Millat sent off to the east to become a more traditional Bangladeshi Muslim. Needless to say, things don't really go as planned or anticipated for either Archie or Samad.

What makes this novel so memorable are the epic scope, the memorable characterizations, and the facility Smith shows with language and dialog from so many different types of characters. She seems to have mastered the nuances of both genders and of a number of nationalities. Thoroughly engaging and hard to put down, White Teeth is a fantastic novel.

Saturday

I read Ian McEwan's Saturday several weeks ago and I still can't decide if I really liked it. Part of my annoyance was no fault of the book's. I had read a string of books that were essentially about navel gazing middle aged men from the late 20th Century pondering Their Place In the World. American Pastoral. Underworld. The Sea. And now, Saturday.

The book is about Henry Perowne, a successful neurosurgeon and his perfect life and family. His wife is a successful lawyer, his daughter a just-published poetess, his son a locally acclaimed blues guitarist. His father in law is a famous poet who lives in France, and all is swell in Henry's wealthy, just-so universe. Talk about a character it's hard to like!

The novel takes place entirely on the titular day of the week, and begins with a potential harbinger of doom. Henry awakes early to see a plane apparently crash on entry into Heathrow. Terrorist act? Henry seems sure that it was. His day is busy and eventful, and he has scheduled a game of squash, a trip to the market, a visit to his mother (who has Alzheimer's) and finally a big family dinner that is meant to be a reconciliation between his daughter and her grandfather, who had a falling out the summer before. However, during the course of the day, a fender bender with a sociopath named Baxter threatens to change the whole game plan.

I felt like some of the scenes in this novel were gratuitous, especially when Baxter holds the family hostage. The writing is strong, but the story could only truly be of interest to someone who felt some kind of familiarity with Perowne's life and lifestyle. I didn't. But maybe that was the point. Maybe McEwan wanted to point out that even in the most perfect of lives, there is a constant threat of upheaval and unhappiness. If that was the point, Roth did it much better in American Pastoral.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

This is a terrific book and it's hard to think of anyone who wouldn't enjoy it. Although it might technically be classified as a book for Young Adults, it is appropriate for anyone who enjoys great writing and wonderful characters. Author Mark Haddon apparently drew on his experience of working with autistic children in order to write this book.

Christopher John Francis Boone is a teenager with Asperger's Syndrome, which is a form of autism. Chris is in some ways a normal kid, but in others, his condition takes the forefront. An absolute whiz with numbers, Chris can't stand to be touched and can't let his foods touch each other. He intensely dislikes anything brown or yellow, and needs his routines to be just so.

Told from Chris' point of view, the book begins with the gruesome discovery of the neighbor's dead dog, lying in the yard with a pitchfork stuck through it. After being initially suspected, Chris decides to investigate for himself, and the book is supposed to be his record of his discoveries. In actuality, the book is about Chris, his beleaguered father (his mother having died suddenly previously), his assorted neighbors, teachers, and even his reactions to complete strangers. The chapters are numbered with prime numbers only, and Chris educates us all by including several illustrations and math problems.

The term 'heart-warming' is overused and can indicate that a book is uncomfortably close to melodrama or pathos, but it is applicable in this case. Having a protagonist who is maddening but perfectly honest is a rare and unusual feat, and Chris' story shines a light on the joys and challenges of real people who have similarities with this fictional character. A very unique reading experience.

Too Loud a Solitude

"I do not so much read as savour the words. I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck on it like a fruit drop." This quote from the protagonist of Bohuml Hrabal's Too Loud a Solitude is as good a description of the love of reading as any I've come across. I have reread this slim novel several times and can definitely count it amongst my favorites.

Hanta is a trash compactor, specializing in paper and books. Living in a repressive Czechoslovakia in the 1970s, there are plenty of books to crush. Books that have been banned or purloined from wealthy out of favor families are brought to Hanta and his compacting machine. But Hanta can't bring himself to destroy many of the books. He carefully smuggles some of them to academics, others he keeps for himself. He fashions huge piles of books in his home, some embedded in the compacted remains of other books, wrapped in beautiful art prints. Although he is a modest and simple man, his knowledge of the classics is excellent. When he retires, he buys his compactor and brings it home to continue his life's mission.

'Crushing' is the operative term for this novel. The books are crushed, the human spirit is crushed by repression, and Hanta's fate is not difficult to figure out. There is not a lot of straight plot to this novel, but something about it just stays with me. The writing is beautiful and at 98 pages, a quick and satisfying read.

The Talented Mr. Ripley

Most people know of the all-star Hollywood film made of this a few years ago, starring Matt Damon, Jude Law, and Gwenyth Paltrow. I've never seen the film, but knew that Patricia Highsmith had written three or four books featuring sociopath Tom Ripley, and that this was the first.

The plot revolves around the 25 year old Tom, an obviously intelligent young man with some serious, for lack of a better word, issues. He is grifting his way through life in New York, scamming people out of tax money they think they owe to the IRS and sponging off friends. He runs across the father of an acquaintance, Mr. Greenleaf, who offers Tom a free trip to Europe if he'll go to Italy and try to persuade Greenleaf's son Dickie to give up his artistic lifestyle and come home to the family business and an ill mother.

Once Tom encounters Dickie and his casual girlfriend, Marge, in the little seaside town in Italy, he knows he has his work cut out for him. Dickie has no interest in returning to the States, and is living comfortably off of an independent inheritance. A major subtext of the novel is Tom's ambiguous sexuality, and it soon becomes apparent that Tom is obsessed with Dickie, much to the discomfort of Marge. Eventually, Tom murders Dickie and steals his identity (I'm not giving anything away; it is at this point that the book really gets going).

Tension mounts as Tom's seemingly impossible ploy threatens to go off the rails again and again. There is amazing suspense in trying to figure out how on earth he's going to pull this off. If you're a fan of detective or crime fiction, you'd be well off to pick this one up. It was highly unusual for Highsmith to write a book featuring the 'bad guy' as the protagonist. Tom Ripley is a fantastic creation and I'll be anxious to read more books in this series.

Schooling

Based on some message boards I've read and reviews I've seen, Heather McGowan's Schooling seems to divide readers pretty evenly into those who really enjoyed it or those who really loathed it. Much of the writing slips in and out of various styles, sometimes stream of consciousness, sometimes like a screenplay. The effect can be maddening and it is definitely not an easy read. However, for the open minded reader, it can be a very satisfying reading experience. Strict realists will struggle with whether or not the events being described are really happening as they are being described, but one willing to take the ride McGowan offers will ultimately be rewarded with a fairly clear story arc.

Schooling is about young Catrine Evans, a young American girl who's father enrolls her in the English boarding school he attended after her mother dies. You get the sense that he loves her but just doesn't know what to do with her; boarding school allows him to care for her without having to look after her. Catrine's assimilation is difficult to say the least, and her relationship with some of her classmates and especially with one of her instructors forms the centerpiece of the novel's plot.

I felt like McGowan did a good job of capturing the bizarre ways a thirteen year old's mind works. The disjointed nature of the narrative is a good representation of the chaos of the early teen years and the extremes in emotion and temperament most teens deal with. I was able to hang with the plot, although there were a few times I felt a little lost. As long as I kept going, eventually all was made clear. I'm glad I read this book. It is a perfect example of why I like the list. This is definitely one I never would have picked up on my own.

The God of Small Things

Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things is a Booker Prize winner, a wonderful feat for a first novel. The writing is fluid, descriptive and beautiful. Set in Kerala, India, the novel is about an Indian family that is going through a slow change in fortune. Ammu has moved back to her family's home with her twins, Rahel and Esthappen, products of an undesirable marriage that has caused great consternation within her family. Her mother and aunt run the house while her brother Chacko runs the family food business, a pickling and canning company. The novel opens with the funeral of their English cousin, Chacko's daughter Sophie Mol. The plot of the novel unfolds towards the death of poor Sophie Mol, creating great suspense even though the ultimate outcome is known. The fallout from this event shadows the lives of every member of the family. While this book in many ways can be read as an indictment of the caste system, its focus is more personal than public, and it is the character's search for forgiveness and redemption that drives the novel.

I have to say that I love the plot device in books like this: a known ending and suspense and interest that lies in how we are going to arrive at that ending. Roy's writing is very fluid, mixing a sense of traditional storytelling with very modern incursions. She builds believable and flawed characters who the reader comes to care about. There is a sense of melancholy and tragedy that hangs over the entire work, although there are lighter, almost comic moments. She does an especially good job of putting the reader at home in a part of the world that might be entirely foreign. My understanding is that Roy has given up writing to become a full-time activist. Noble as that is, it is a shame we don't have more stories like this one from her.

Willard and His Bowling Trophies

This book is subtitled 'A Perverse Mystery'. There's not much mystery but it certainly is perverse. Richard Brautigan's writing style is very interesting. The chapters are very short (usually 2-3 pages) and the prose is very simplistic. It is almost as if his audience is a group of fifth graders. The content, however, is definitely adult.

This short novel features two sets of couples who live in the same apartment building. The upstairs couple, Bob and Constance are going through some difficult times. Constance has given Bob a venereal disease and Bob is having a hard time dealing. The couple are attempting to work through their issues via soft S and M but are struggling. Downstairs, John and Pat are enjoying a successful relationship and seemingly content. In their front room is Willard, a stuffed bird, and a collection of bowling trophies.

Looming over this are the Logan brothers, once upright young men who enjoyed family and bowling, now hell-bent and obsessed with finding their purloined bowling trophies. They have gone from petty theft, to assault, and finally to murder in their quest. The book leads up to the inevitable coming together of the principal characters, with odd fate thrown in for good measure.

I view this story as a reaction to the mid-70s hangover from 60s ideals. To me, the Logans represent all that was right with American society, and how quickly it could turn very wrong once the goals and aims it sought were gone missing.

I can't say I loved this book, but it was interesting and I read it in one easy sitting. Brautigan committed suicide in the early 1980s. His best known work is probably Trout Fishing in America.

The Good Soldier Svejk

Author Jaroslav Hasek seems like a character from a novel himself. A Czech citizen, Hasek as a youth was an anarchist and a first-class practical joker. After falling in love with a girl whose parents hardly approved of him, Hasek attempted to leave his wild days behind, to little avail. After publishing several short stories, Hasek became editor of an animal magazine. He was dismissed after it was discovered that he was making animals up and writing long descriptions of their physiology and habitats. After attempting to fake his own death in order to get out of his unhappy marriage, he was enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian army and saw duty in the First World War. From this experience, Hasek created an indelible character in The Good Soldier Svejk.

Svejk is Hasek's variation on the bumbling idiot, constantly thwarting the plans of his superiors, and yet somehow never being truly punished. Svejk's simplicity is either real or feigned, it is hard to tell for sure. He is a hard drinker, loves a good time, and is devoted to his superiors to a fault. Through Svejk and his cohort of soldiers and civilians, Hasek has a grand canvas on which to paint the absurdities of military life and wartime. Svejk follows his orders to a tee, even if it means disaster for the army and his superiors.

The book is really a series of vignettes, certainly related to each other, but Hasek never really finished The Good Soldier Svejk. The book just sort of ends without any type of resolution. It hardly matters. This is one of the funniest books I've ever read, and Svejk is one of the most indelible characters I've come across. Hasek planned to finish Svejk, but a stint as a Bolshevik, the icy reception from the Czechs once he returned to Prague, and ultimately his death meant that it was never to be. Still, what we have is a rollicking good novel that will make you laugh out loud as well as think. By the way, the illustrations that adorn the text, by artist Joseph Lada, add immeasurably to the pleasure of reading this book.

NOTE: Thanks to dainfomaster for a great link to all things Svejk.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

This one, by Michael Chabon, is definitely a favorite, and is a favorite of many of my friends. It's a perfect novel in a lot of ways: memorable characters, sharp plotting, originality in spades, and a storyline that creates a compulsive page turner. This is probably my favorite novel of the past 7 or 8 years.

The plot involves the story of Joe Kavalier, a Jewish teen who escapes from Prague and lands in New York where he hooks up with his cousin Sammy Clay. Sammy, an idea man, is excited to learn that Joe is an artist of some talent, and together they immerse themselves in the world of a beloved 1940s American development: the comic book. Clay remains rooted to his love of the comic, superheroes, and his own 'secret identity', while Kavalier takes a rockier path in his relationships and his own quest to find himself.

While ultimately it is the story and the characters that make this novel so compelling, it really is just a big long love letter to America, and more importantly, the ideal of America; that two kids, one an immigrant, the other an all-American nobody, could transcend class and station to become American success stories. The novel also examines the tricky territory of identity in America, and how individuals can reinvent themselves as they see fit. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is an affirmation of the American dream, and a memorable example of a novelist working at his prime. Chabon won the Pulitzer Prize for this book, and in my opinion deserved it.

Hard Times

This will be the first of what will be many posts on Charles Dickens. Dickens' life was in many ways worthy of novelization. His contribution to western literature cannot be overstated. Some complain that his books are too long, that he was capitalizing on the days when novels were originally serialized in magazines, and a longer story meant a bigger payday. Still, Dickens' best work is a continuation of the social protest of Swift, but imbued with a comic sensibility second to none. His books are beautiful, sprawling, terrifying, hilarious, and cautionary.

Hard Times isn't one of the books that leaps to mind for a lot of people when you mention Dickens, and certainly some of the other novels deserve to be more well-known. But in Hard Times, Dickens points his microscope at utilitarianism, the tyranny of statistics, and the burgeoning industrialization that was the hallmark of northern Britain in the mid ninteenth century.

The story follows Mr. Gradgrind, the administrator of a school, Sissy Jupe, one of his students, and her interactions with his own two children, Louisa and Thomas. Sissy falls afoul of her school's utilitarian atmosphere by following her own flights of fancy. Over time, Sissy's life becomes intertwined with those of the Gradgrinds and their circle.

Dickens' contempt for some of the hallmarks of British society is well-known, and in other books he targets the legal system, the poorhouses, and the education system. Here, he sees the negative aspects of industrialization and conformity as the killing of beauty and imagination. Like most of Dickens' work, it is at turns tragic and comic. You will not forget the characters at the heart of this dark comedy. I'd rate this as top shelf Dickens, if not up to the standards of A Tale of Two Cities or David Copperfield.

The Sea

Sometimes I read for pleasure, sometimes I read for edification. It is a happy day when a book provides both. John Banville's The Sea is one of the books that falls more squarely in the latter category for me. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it, but reading it is more like an exercise in the appreciation of good writing as opposed to hanging on the edge of your seat as the plot unfolds. Banville's prose is incredibly well-written, but can be dense. It wanders as the mind will wander, often going off on tangents, but usually ending up where it needs to.

The Sea is about a man, Max Morden, who has lost his wife to cancer. As part of his grieving process, he revisits a seaside resort where he spent a few eventful summers during his youth. He is clearly searching for something that he feels he lost along the way, or maybe never had in the first place. By his own admission, he is less than driven in his career as an art historian, and has coasted comfortably through his life on the wealth of his wife.

At the resort, Max is haunted by his memories of the Graces, an upper class family with children his own age who represent to him all of the possibilities that seem to be out of his grasp. His interactions with them lead to events that will change both Max and the Grace family.

The Sea is a reflective book, and reading it it is hard not to become reflective oneself. All of the tiny slights, humiliations, triumphs, and decisions a person makes somehow turn cumulative with time, and this beautifully written book forces the reader to examine him or herself. It is not always easy going, but it is rewarding.

A Prayer for Owen Meany

John Irving is one of my favorite authors. His novels are generally sweeping epics, filled with characters both endearing and absurd. He is a master with plot and is one of the authors who has been able to straddle the fence between popular and highbrow fiction. While he has his detractors, and, in my opinion, some of his recent work has fallen short, the standard he set with The World According to Garp, The Hotel New Hampshire, The Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and A Son of the Circus is enough to ensure his stature as one the finest authors of his generation.

A Prayer for Owen Meany is probably my favorite Irving novel; it is nostalgic, thought-provoking, profound, and above all else, just a fabulous yarn. The novel takes the form of the rememberances of John Wheelwright, princiapally the time he spent with his friend Owen Meany. Owen, who suffers from an unidentified malady, never progresses beyond the size of a small child. He has a bizarre voice, which Irving represents by using all capital letters when Owen speaks. During a softball game, Owen's only hit of his little league career results in the death of John's beloved mother. From this moment on, Owen is convinced he is an instrument of God, and forsees a future in which his death will save others and have great meaning.

Does Owen have a Christ complex? Or is he truly an instrument of God?John is never really sure until the ending, and everything is made clear. John says early on that he is a Christian because of Owen Meany. Certainly, his relationship with Owen answers questions about his own cloudy paternity and his feelings about faith. Along the way, we meet many memorable characters who engage in events both melodramatic and comical. Irving's sense of humor is intact throughout, although the overall tone is ruminative.

The novel contains John's ruminations on faith as well as his disgust with the state of the U.S. government and its policies (circa the late 1980s). Obviously, this is Irving the author speaking directly to us through one of his characters, a ploy he also uses extensively in The Cider House Rules. These passages can drag, but never for long enough to pull the reader away from an incredibly emotional reading experience.

Underworld

Tackling Underworld is a daunting task. Eight hundred and twenty seven pages that span the better part of 50 years, the narrative jumps back and forth in time in a liquid fashion that can leave the reader mentally exhausted.

Although the majority of the book is 'about' Nick Shay, a native New Yorker with a hardscrabble upbringing who becomes an Arizona based solid waste disposal executive, the real main character of Underworld is the Cold War era and the way it defined the lives of those who came of age during it. Nick, his military scientist brother, his former lover, her chess-teaching husband, Nick's mother, wife, and a baseball memorabilia collector are the vessels through which the narrative weaves, tackling issues as diverse as dementia, redemption, the arms race, the loss of the ideals of the 1950s, and yes, the logical extension of how mankind deals with its trash.

The writing is pretty amazing. The much-lauded first chapter, an omniscient description of the legendary 1951 baseball game between the Giants and the Dodgers at the Polo Grounds in New York, deserves the praise that has been heaped upon it. DeLillo skillfully interweaves the individual stories of random ordinary folk in the stands with the musings of the more famous celebrities present: Jackie Gleason, Frank Sinatra, and J. Edgar Hoover. The baseball that Bobby Thomson launches into the stands becomes a focal point for much of the narrative that follows.

DeLillo was clearly aiming for the grandstands himself with this novel. The book, published in 1997, has a cover which features the Twin Towers looming behind a graveyard. Not only does this image seem eerily prescient, but the novel stands as a grand elegy to the twentieth century and all the personal and societal upheaval encountered during its final forty years. Even at its great length, the novel somehow feels unfinished, leaving the reader in the same kind of limbo the 20th century abandoned us in.

Misfortune

Misfortune was the first novel from Wesley Stace, who is also known as 'gangsta-folk' artist John Wesley Harding. As Harding, Stace has released several albums beginning in the late 1980s. At that time, Stace abandoned a PhD he was seeking in order to focus on becoming a full time professional musician. During that time, he wrote a song entitled 'Miss Fortune' about a male baby who is found orphaned by a wealthy man and brought up as a girl. This song served as the genesis for the novel. (For an extensive interview I was fortunate enough to conduct with Stace about his music career and his first novel, go here.)

Misfortune, which is set in the latter part of the nineteenth century, begins just like the song. Lord Lovall discovers the infant in a trash pile and brings him home, and, for reasons of his own, names him Rose and raises him as a girl. Rose lives an idyllic life in the English countryside, surrounded by family and friends, until secondary sexual characteristics begin to manifest themselves and life becomes, as you can imagine, far more complicated. This exploration of gender, identity, different types of love and the quality of love earned almost universal praise when it was released and appeared on many 'Best Of' lists for 2005.

I loved this book for a number of reasons. Firstly, it can be honestly described as 'Dickensian' in its setting, ambition, and sprawl. Characters have names that would have pleased Dickens, and the bizarre interactions between some of them, and the neat ending, are also traits associated with the master. Secondly, while the style is certainly a throwback to the novelists of the nineteenth century, the subject matter most certainly contains a more modern slant. The concept of sexual identity was not completely foreign to the writers of that time, but probably wouldn't have been viewed through the lens of late twentieth century morays as this book is.

Misfortune is a thoroughly entertaining novel. It keeps the reader interested and is ambitious in scope and size, especially for a first novel (albeit one many years in the making). I love big novels wherein a reader can get lost in a familiar, but ultimately fabricated world, and this is one of them.

Gabriel's Gift

The novelist Hanif Kureishi is perhaps better known as a screenwriter, and his credits include indie faves such as Sammy and Rosie Get Laid and My Beautiful Launderette. He has also written books, including The Buddha of Suburbia and this novel, Gabriel's Gift.

Gabriel's Gift is the story of a teenage boy who's family is falling apart. His rarely employed father, a former member of a superstar musician's band, is not supporting his family. His mother, understandably resentful of his lazy ways, decides to toss him out the door. Gabriel retreats into his imagination, where he has conversations with his dead twin. Things are going poorly for Gabriel until he meets the rock star his father once played for, Lester Jones. Jones, a David Bowie-esque glam rocker from the seventies, gives Gabriel a drawing, and the ownership of this drawing sets into motion a chain of events that change Gabriel, and his family, forever.

This is a very light-hearted book that is very easy to digest in a couple of extended sittings. For some reason, I am always drawn to stories about Britain's lower-middle class. Kureishi is a strong storyteller, and it is no surprise that there is a cinematic quality to his writing. This one left me with a very good feeling and is a great one to take on the plane or to the beach. As a musician, I especially enjoyed the meditations on the nature of creativity and self-expression, which form the basis for the action of the plot.

The Plot Against America

I first read a Philip Roth novel while I was in college. It was Portnoy's Complaint and I did not enjoy it. After reading a few more of his books over the past year, I am anxious to go back and re-read Portnoy's. I am beginning to suspect I lacked the worldview to understand it properly at the time. With the deaths of Saul Bellow, Joseph Heller, and Kurt Vonnegut in recent years, Roth is arguably the most important American novelist left of his generation. His output over the past ten or twelve years has been prodigious and, at age 75, he has a new novel, Indignation, released this past week.

The Plot Against America combines great story-telling with 'What If' history and is a very compelling novel. Nobody who has read Roth before will be surprised that the setting is Newark in the 1940s, or that the narrator's name is, well, Philip Roth. Most of Roth's work has some elements of autobiography and it is not the first time he has inserted a character with his own name into the proceedings. In this alternate telling of history, the aviator and national hero Charles Lindbergh has run successfully for the presidency of the United States, defeating Roosevelt on a platform of isolationism, effectively keeping the United States out of World War II. Lindbergh, in fact, was an avid isolationist, and spoke forcefully on the matter many times. In Roth's alternate tale, Lindbergh's Nazi sympathies and tacit agreements with Hitler slowly begin to erode the quality of life and civil liberties of America's Jewish citizens, including the Roth family. What makes the book so compelling is that Roth presents an alternate history that is not difficult to believe would happen if the right circumstances existed. In addition, the forced migrations, attempts to integrate Jews into mainstream middle America, and the lynchings of some dissenters are eerily similar to real fates that befell American Indians and African Americans in the earlier parts of the last century.

This novel is an excellent starting point for Roth if you haven't read any of his work. It was hard to put this one down.

Henderson the Rain King

Saul Bellow is one of the most notable American authors of the past century, and Henderson the Rain King was the first book of his I have read. Originally published in 1958, the novel is the story of Gene Henderson, a wealthy middle aged American man who is lost in the middle of the American century. An absentee father, twice-divorced, and borderline alcoholic, Henderson is desperately seeking to find out what its all about. To fulfill his dream of finding a new life, he makes an impromptu trip into the African Bush, with only his long-suffering faithful guide Romilayu to help him along the way. His interactions with two tribes in the region are hilarious and profound. His relationship with King Dahfu is the basis for Bellow's thoughts on modern culture, what makes a man a man, and the philosophy of the meaning of strength.

I enjoyed this novel very much and am looking forward to reading more of Bellow's work (although I understand that this novel is not necessarily typical for him). My favorite part of Henderson the Rain King is Henderson himself. He is a comic creation that can be compared favorably to Ignatius Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces. His blustering, yet heartfelt, manner with the citizens of the African tribes he meets up with make him a perfect symbol of all that is regrettable and great about the American abroad. The last third of the book becomes a little ponderous, as Bellow shifts from comic plot to philosophical debate (embodied in the discussions between Henderson and the King) but the ending is satisfying and I laughed out loud a number of times. Guys feeling the mid-life crisis burn should definitely give this one a read.

Never Let Me Go

Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go was the last book on the initial publication of the List. Evidently, there are updated versions of the List that drop some books and add others, and this book is one that was dropped. To keep myself semi-sane, I'm sticking with the original list that I used, which can be found here.

I knew nothing about Ishiguro or his body of work when I picked this up. I recognized a book that he'd written, The Remains of the Day, from an award winning movie starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson (which I have not seen).

Never Let Me Go was a fantastic introduction to fiction on the List that I'd never considered. I guess you could technically call this book science fiction, as it deals with a dystopian Britain of the near-future. Still, if 'science fiction' to you means robots or space ships, that's not what is happening here.

The novel unfolds at its own pace, with Ishiguro revealing key plot points as he sees fit. This creates an incredible curiosity in the reader to determine just what is going on. The basic premise of the novel involves a trio of characters who went to an extremely exclusive boarding school in the wilds of rural England. It is clear from the beginning that it is not a normal school, and once the three graduate it becomes even more evident as they transition to what can best be described as a halfway house of a rustic farm that acts as a buffer for them as they integrate into regular society. Soon it becomes clear that the three, and all of the other students at their school and schools like it around the nation, are being prepped for a chilling purpose.

The novel is told from the point of view of one of the three, a young nurse when the action commences, who is looking back upon the relationship she shared with her two best friends, and how they have come to be reunited as adults. This one is highly recommended and raises more questions than it answers. What is the future of genetics? What are the potential moral ramifications of genetic science? And what is the essence of the human being?

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

I thought I'd start with a classic Agatha Christie novel, because that's where a lot of my lit-love started. While far from her most famous book (see: Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, or And Then There Were None), The Murder of Roger Ackroyd set a standard for the locked room British style of mystery writing that has certainly never been surpassed. It is also the lone Christie novel on the List (which I'll designate with a capital 'L' throughout this blog).

When it was first published in 1926, Christie was a young author with only 2 or 3 other novels under her belt. It featured her detective, the retired Belgian police officer Hercule Poirot. Poirot was a mass of idiosyncrasies and was very much in the vein of popular fiction detectives of the time. He famously relied on the 'little grey cells' in his brain to solve puzzles that made fools of lesser mortals.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd concerns exactly what the title would cause one to expect. Ackroyd, a wealthy man in a small British village, is found murdered in his study. Poirot, who has recently moved to the village in retirement to grow vegetable marrows, is intrigued by the case and soon discovers there are no shortage of suspects and motives. However, there appears to be a major lack of opportunity to commit the crime in between the time Ackroyd was last seen and the discovery of his body.

Christie stymied me most of the time, but this was one of the few novels that actually took my breath away upon finding out the identity of the killer. Some critics have dismissed the ending as a dirty trick, but a careful reading reveals that all of the clues are laid out during the narrative. Christie devised any number of incredibly clever stories, but a reader would be hard pressed to find one trickier than The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

Welcome!

This blog is being created more as a reading diary than as a public forum, although friends and family are welcome to browse, post comments, or to give recommendations. Why create a reading blog? I can explain everything...

I have always been a voracious reader. When I was young, my mother cleverly paid my allowance in Hardy Boys mysteries instead of cash. The results were twofold: first, I developed a love for stories and reading, and secondly, I became rather anal about lists and collections. To this day, I can be obsessive about having complete sets of the work of my favorite authors and musicians. I like series of things. I love lists. I used to religiously catalog each of the Agatha Christie mysteries as I finished them. I was sad when I had plowed through all eighty-some novels by the time I was seventeen.

Whilst in college, I began a campaign of cultural edification. I read Dostoevsky, Dickens, and classics from Ken Kesey, Phillip Roth, and began an infatuation with the works of John Irving.

During my late twenties and early thirties I moved on from fiction of all sorts to history. I couldn't get enough. This parlayed directly into a career change from corporate trainer to high school teacher. Books led me there, without a doubt.

In this, my forty-first year, I discovered the 1001 Books You Should Read Before You Die list. I thought of myself as being fairly well-read and was astounded when I discovered I'd only read 30 of the books on the list. Friends of mine were well into the hundreds when I urged them to make an accounting for themselves. My literary OCD kicked in and I began reading exclusively from the list in earnest.

It has been a very gratifying experience. Without question, I have been exposed to many novels and authors I probably would have remained entirely ignorant of. As of this writing, I am up to 52 books from the list and counting. I have re-discovered my love of literature and my love of lists.

This blog will feature my thoughts and musings on the books I read or have read previously. Not all will be from the list, although I'll label them as such when they are. If you stumble across this, please join in if you see fit. Again, I am intending it primarily as a reading diary, not as a device for me to pose as a literary critic, which I most certainly am not.

The name of this blog? I downloaded a spreadsheet of the 1001 books which allowed a person to identify the books he or she had read. Afterward, you plug your age into a box and, using average life expectancies, the spreadsheet kicks out how many books a year you would have to read to finish the list. For me, it was 28 books a year.