Updated (1/20/02)

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Cold, John Smolens
The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

Recently Read

The Subject Steve, Sam Lipsyte

A Whale Hunt, Robert Sullivan

A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole

Inside the Sky, William Langewiesche
Sahara Unveiled, William Langewiesche
Cutting for Sign, William Langewiesche

I loved all three of these books, especially Inside the Sky which has some of my favorite Langewiesche Atlantic Monthly pieces in it.

Banvard's Folly, Paul Collins

I thought this book was mean-spirited. Collins says in the preface what draws him to the subject of those people forgotten by history: "The man or woman of promise who has nothing but excuses and regrets to offer at the end of the day - these people we do worse than despise." Most people are forgotten by history. I guess I don't understand how Collins thinks he's helping by pointing out thirteen failures and laughing at them, Nelson Muntz-like. (That said, I really liked the chapter on Ephraim Bull and the Concord Grape.)

The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Stephen King

I've heard someone say about Harold Robbins that if he had stopped writing after A Stone for Danny Fisher, his literary reputation as a great writer would have been secured. While I don't think that Stephen King will ever approach the level of abject hackitude that Harold Robbins has achieved, I sometimes wonder what the world would think of King if he had stopped writing in the early '80s. I thought this book was predictable and not at all scary, and I'm a Red Sox fan. I wouldn't have even started "The Girl Who Mariano Rivera."

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick

I don't want to give anything away, but the answer is "yes." I really liked this book.

Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerny

Oh, how I miss the eighties -- the coke, the booze, the women. Elementary school rocked.

Empire Falls, Richard Russo

A Pitcher's Story: Innings with David Cone, Roger Angell

Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, Chris Ware

Want a reason to dislike me? (Do you already have reasons to dislike me? Oh, please, say it ain't so). Here's a good one: I didn't like this book at all.

I thought it was cute but difficult to read. It was beautifully illustrated, yes and laid out in, umm, interesting ways, but I just didn't ever really get into it. I won't say any more because of the harm that this is doing to my indie cred.

My Goodness, Joe Queenan

Joe Queenan is an asshole. I'm sure he'd tell you the same thing. In fact, this whole book is about the degree to which he has been an asshole in the past and how he's going to set that straight. I really liked the book. Queenan doesn't pull any punches and generally his subjects deserve the scorn they receive (himself included). My father, however, did not like this book at all. He just thought it was mean-spirited. So, either there's a generational thing going on here or I'm just a jerk.

The Alienist, Caleb Carr

A friend said she'd read this and thought it was worth reading. I made a horrible mistake, though, when it came to actually reading the book.

I started the book at the end of a vacation and I was really enjoying it. It's a mystery/historical fiction book, and the pace is really swift. I had gotten through about half of it by the time the plane landed in Hartford. I put the book in my back-pack and promptly forgot about it -- I was busy, work was eating up a lot of my time and I didn't read anything other than the back of a cereal box for a couple of days.

Then I talked to my friend (the one who recommended the book) and she said, "You've got to finish that book." I thought, "Oh yeah, I forgot all about that book I was reading."

I started in on it again. In the meantime, however, I had forgotten most of what had happened and the suspense element (one of the main reasons to read this book) had deflated. It was like watching the first half of Silence of the Lambs on Monday, then pausing it and watching the second half a week from Thursday. Not a good idea.

I finished the book. I liked the book. I just feel like I cheated myself out of truly appreciating it. The sad thing is this: I can't do anything about it. I won't ever be able to re-read it and capture that thing I lost. I'll always remember too much of the plot to be surprised by any of the twists.


Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon

I'd seen the movie Wonder Boys three times and was curious to see how similar the film was to the book. Pretty similar, it turns out. Often when I read a book after I've seen the movie based on it (or seen the movie after I've read the book) I'm surprised by how many minor, seemingly immaterial details have been altered: names changed, characters added or left out, cities switched. I understand that making a movie from a book requires certain sacrifices, I just have never understood why movie-makers insist on changing elements of a story solely, it seems, for the sake of making changes.

Oddly, in this case I probably liked the movie more than I liked the book. This may, of course, be nothing more than a function of having seen the movie first.

(Salon has an article on the reasoning behind the re-release of the movie. It's a good read.)


The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman
The Subtle Knife, Philip Pullman
The Amber Spyglass, Philip Pullman

I don't read a lot of fantasy books. In fact, I probably haven't read a single fantasy novel since finishing the Shannara trilogy in middle school. I feel compelled to mention this as there's a stigma attached with reading fantasy and science fiction and I have low esteem. (That's a joke, Mark - stop crying. Sorry about that).

A friend recommended these to me, and I thought, What the hell. Sarah Lyall, in The New York Times had this to say about the final book in the trilogy, The Amber Spyglass:

In this way, Mr. Pullman's book offers an explicit alternative to C. S. Lewis's "Chronicles of Narnia," with their pervasive Christian message. In the Narnia books, nestled inside the delightful stories of talking animals, heroic challenges and whimsical scenes, the meaning is clear: the heroes find true happiness only after death, when their spiritual superiority buys them passage to heaven.

It is a conclusion with which Mr. Pullman thoroughly disagrees. "When you look at what C. S. Lewis is saying, his message is so anti-life, so cruel, so unjust," he said. "The view that the Narnia books have for the material world is one of almost undisguised contempt. At one point, the old professor says, 'It's all in Plato' -- meaning that the physical world we see around us is the crude, shabby, imperfect, second-rate copy of something much better."

Instead, Mr. Pullman argues for a "republic of heaven" where people live as fully and richly as they can because there is no life beyond. "I wanted to emphasize the simple physical truth of things, the absolute primacy of the material life, rather than the spiritual or the afterlife," he said. "That's why the angels envy our bodies -- because our senses are keener, our muscles are stronger. If the angels had our bodies and our nerves, they'd be in a perpetual state of ecstasy."

These turned out to be really good - entertaining and exciting.


The Ice Storm, Rick Moody

When I started reading this, I couldn't get out of my head this quote from the Dave Eggers-Harvard Advocate interview:

"And now, as far as McSweeney's is concerned, the Advocate interviewer wants to know if we're losing also our edge, if the magazine is selling out, hitting the mainstream, if we're still committed to publishing unknowns, and pieces killed by other magazines.

"And the fact is, I don't give a fuck. When we did the last issue, this was my thought process: I saw a box. So I decided we'd do a box. We were given stories by some of our favorite writers--George Saunders, Rick Moody (who is uncool, uncool!), Haruki Murakami, Lydia Davis, others--and so we published them. Did I wonder if people would think we were selling out, that we were not fulfilling the mission they had assumed we had committed ourselves to?

"No. I did not. Nor will I ever. We just don't care."

I totally missed out on the Rick Moody lash/backlash thing. I knew he was a good writer. I heard good things about Purple America when it came out. I read Garden State a while ago and liked that. I just didn't know that it had been decided that Rick Moody was uncool -- that it's a bad thing to have your book turned into a movie. I agree with Dave Eggers, Rick Moody is ok by me.


The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon
The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
Paris To The Moon, Adam Gopnik
White Teeth, Zadie Smith
Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee
Sacred Hunger, Barry Unsworth
Into The Great Wide Open, Kevin Canty
A Heartbraking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers



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