Book Reviews, January to June 2018

Another six months, another pile of books. So far, I’m at my goal of a book a week. I’m fully aware that in some part I’m reading to the list, but like many things in life, I’ve settled into a comfortable habit, so here we go. If you only give one book from this list a shot, it should be either Lincoln in the Bardo or LaRose.

Lincoln in the Bardo – George Saunders

The first book I read this year was arguably the best. Saunders’ Bardo is an “experimental” reflection on a short period in Lincoln’s life following the death of his young son, and the ghosts of the Bardo graveyard in which he is interred. The style bounces between pathos and subtle wit, including a passage about a party at the Lincoln’s composed completely of short overlapping and wildly varying accounts from guests that feels right at home in our post-truth era. I think my enjoyment was enhanced in having listened to this as an audiobook, with an ensemble cast that included sublime performances by Nick Offerman and David Sedaris.

Men Without Women – Haruki Murakami

Murakami is in his element in this collection of short stories, gently prying into the messy organics of individual relationships and the broader relationships between men and women. As usual with Murakami, I feel like I’m missing a little in cultural translation, but I’m still left with a deftly- constructed set of vignettes.  

Book of Daniel – E.L. Doctorow

I’m continuing to make my way through Doctorow’s works, and Book of Daniel is certainly the high-water mark so far. Nominally it’s a fictionalization of the Rosenberg trials and executions, but this starting point splits into two mutual tracks; Doctorow drags his characters through a background of the turbulent history of the time, while also colliding family members against each other in claustrophobic orbits.  

Hamilton – Ron Chernow

It was hard to come at Hamilton after the spectacle of the musical and picking this up and setting it down a couple times. While Chernow gets credit for starting the Hamilton “revolution”, this tome seems to fall short in a lot of ways. The pacing and continuity is a bit inconsistent, and Chernow makes some leaps of supposition that really seem a bit stretched. It was helpful to get a fuller backstory, but I didn’t come away impressed by Chernow’s writing.

Barkskins – Annie Proulx

Barkskins is the embodiment of a traditional epic. It follows two family dynasties, one white and one Native/Metis, set against the clash of cultures and the clash of men with wilderness, spanning centuries from the early fur trade to the modern era. As usual, Proulx’s characters are vibrant and complex. Even minor players have backstories that could be novels in and of themselves (though not as densely packed as in Accordion Crimes). Proulx remains one of my favorite American authors.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms – George RR Martin

Ok, so this is fluff. Profoundly fluffy fluff. Not even fluff in its own regard, but side story fluff from Martin’s Game-of-Thronesaverse. I needed an audiobook for a long ride, and this was what was available at quick search. The story is a prequel to the GoT storyline, following the development of some characters-before-they-were-characters. It wasn’t bad per se, just relatively forgettable. I do give Martin credit for keeping the story fairly reined in, rather than his usual ridiculousness of disjointedly moving over weighted companies of characters aimlessly across landscapes.

Moonglow – Michael Chabon

Chabon’s Moonglow has been sitting on my bedside table for a little while, and I finally got to it. Moonglow is a family story in the truest sense; a mix of facts and elaboration. It is a retelling of the life of Chabon’s grandfather in post-war America, and is a mirror for the epochs through which he drifted. At its heart it’s a story about stories, like an old Kodachrome picture of families on vacation, though in this case the picture is of rockets and alligators and old age. The nuance and tragedy get mixed in the fuzzy, warm color cast of history. As usual with Chabon, the dialogue is worth the price of admission. It’s not as dense and atmospheric as Kavalier and Klay, but it’s Chabon doing what he does well…reflecting the subject and time in his style, telling the story not in just the content but the color of the writing.

LaFayette in the Somewhat United States – Sarah Vowell

Throughout Hamilton I found myself being more interested in LaFayette than Hamilton himself. Vowell’s work came recommended, but it fell a little short for me. In all fairness, I know it wasn’t intended as an exhaustive biography of “America’s favorite fighting Frenchmen” (now that’s in your head for the rest of the day. You’re welcome). It feels like Vowell can’t decide if she’s focusing on Hamilton, or using Hamilton as a lens to look at the struggling new American democracy. In the end, Lafayette ends up being a poor mix of both. It has some great bits, but for better or worse feels like an over-extended This American Life segment. I keep expecting quirky musical breaks between segments. I’d recommend reading this as opposed to listening to the audiobook. Vowell’s voice and comic timing are less than enthralling.

The Fifth Season – N.K. Jemisen

I had expected this sci fi/fantasy bit to be another bit of fluff between weightier works, but was pleasantly surprised (within bounds). Jemisen’s world building is like fan fic for geologists. Instead of the typical werewolf/vampire/angel YA trilogy ridiculousness, the world is structured around geologic forces, the people who wield them like arcane power, and the societal structures that surround it. If Fifth Season starts as a bit derivative of Asimov’s Nightfall, it quickly carves out its own unique niche. The writing is not literature-grade; it’s straight ahead storytelling without much stylistic ornament, but it’s adequate to the task of conveying a unique world vision.

Pulse – Julian Barnes

Much like Murakami’s Japanese characters, I often feel I’m missing some of the nuance of Barnes’ British denizens and settings. His style is masterful, even though he strays a bit farther into dryness and understatement for my tastes. This collection of short stories clashes between quintessentially British dialogue/patter at dinner parties and vignettes of somewhat darker themes than Barnes’ other works. It feels like a take on the dissolution of society playing out in the deteriorating lives of the characters, all overlaid with the false joviality of the dinner party vignettes. It could not be more British if it were a Bulldog draped in the Union Jack, wearing a bowler hat and a monocle.  

Paddle Your Own Canoe – Nick Offerman

I’ve liked Offerman’s writing in the past, and after his performance in Saunders’ Lincoln (above) I picked up the audiobook for Canoe. It started out well, with a great mix of irreverence, Ron Swanson-esque self-reliance stories, but then towards the middle it felt like he ran out of content and started talking about Hollywood, name-dropping, and swooning over his wife for several interminable chapters. It ends on a high note with the eponymous poem, but it really could have its center eviscerated and be a better experience.

Dodge City: Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and the Wickedest Town in the American West – Tom Clavin

I’m not sure why exactly I picked this up, but it was an interesting read. It’s a straight-ahead history of Earp/Masterson before and after their Dodge City days. I was hoping Clavin would give a little more context on Dodge City and the period itself, but he spent most of his time on the aimless wanderings of the lawmen involved. It was an account full of character without going into the sensationalism of other period Western works like Gywnne’s Empire of the Summer Moon. 

LaRose – Louise Erdrich

This story of white and Native families and the complex bindings of mixed communities is Erdrich at her best. Mixing a touch of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ “magical realism” with her traditional style of story-telling, Erdrich creates a very human work that escapes the “magical Indian” trap of other authors (and if we’re being fair, some of Erdrich’s lesser works). The story revolves around the son of one family being “given” to another family as reconciliation for the tragic accidental killing of their son. The way in which Erdrich takes a seemingly implausible arrangement and plays it out in ways that feel organic speak to the depth of her skill. You feel the weight of her characters’ loss, their own internal conflict over the son-swapping decision, and the way in which ordinary life goes on and things become the new normal despite our internal worlds being torn apart.  Erdrich balances writing about the unique aspects of modern life on and near a reservation with the universal experiences of average people in an almost seamless manner. The dialogue between LaRose’s two sisters interspersed throughout the book is almost worth the price of admission itself.

Calling of the Three – Steven King

I had unexpectedly enjoyed King’s first foray into the cowboy D&D of his Dark Tower universe last year, and finally picked up the second volume. It was underwhelming. It drifted from the superb slow reveal of Roland’s “world that has moved on” to a plodding introduction of what can only be described as stereotypes on parade. Even giving King the benefit of the doubt in his touching-on-problematic writing of the split personality of a woman of color that seems drawn from the absolute worst of blaxploitation cinema, the added characters here are hokey. The entire book revolves around Roland collecting destined allies to accompany him on his journey, and the interposition of different eras of America with his “alien” world just feels too jarring. I’m hoping the story improved going forward. It didn’t help that I listened to this as an audiobook with horrible voice acting. 

Wind/Pinball – Haruki Murakami

Wind/Pinball is a collection of Murakami’s earliest works, and, well, it shows. You can feel his style still in development. It is not the masterful writing of later works. That being said, the interlocked stories of the two novels (part of a three-novel cycle) are still good reads. The first novel (Hear the Wind Sing) is probably the lesser of the two halves, and reminds me a lot of Chabon’s Mysteries of Pittsburgh…an early effort that will be reflected in later, better works. It feels a little more autobiographical, dealing with a struggling writer.  Pinball, 1973 is a more developed work, touching on obsession from the narrator over a pinball machine. Both novels touch on a continuing theme of Murakami’s, the suicidal death of a female character. The heavy focus on suicide throughout his works is one of those Murakami elements I feel like I’m not as tuned into because of cultural differences. 

The Antelope Wife – Louise Erdrich

Antelope was an interesting follow-up to LaRose and other Erdrich works. Erdrich typically has touches of storytelling that transcend “reality”, but generally stays firmly rooted in the real, human experiences of her characters.  This work that centers on a devolving relationship and the tragic consequence of a suicide attempt (mirroring Erdrich’s partner’s own suicide) tilts more heavily toward the mythology. The story cuts back and forth between the far past and present, tracing the roots of the turbulent forces that driver her characters, and Erdrich’s style follows suit. The passages from the past are told in a traditional storytelling style, heavy with symbol. The modern elements are grittier, more realistic. Erdrich manages to tie it together well.  

Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy: Hemmingway’s Secret Adventures, 1953-1961 – Nicholas Reynolds

Reynolds is a historian working for the CIA and other agencies, but his take on Hemmingway’s clandestine activities during the Cold War was more engaging than I expected. Reynolds paints a complicated picture of Hemmingway’s time as a resistance fighter among the partisans in Spain, through WWII, and into the Cold War. Despite Reynold’s admitted love of Hemmingway, the work paints a nuanced and complicated portrayal of Hemmingway’s warring nature. He is simultaneously the face of bravery and anti-fascism, and also boorish, self-centered, and easily manipulated. For better or worse, Hemmingway’s wartime antics (which include a hilariously over the top stint in which he volunteered to use his personal fishing boat to hunt German submarines in the Caribbean, intending to lure them in and then throw grenades into open hatches- this was an actual thing he tried to do) show a man caught between the perfection of ideals and the imperfection of both the world and himself. Hemmingway is alternately manipulated by the Soviets, the US, the Cubans, and his own self-deception. An interesting if disheartening read for any Hemmingway fan. As much as his work influenced modern American literature, in his personal life he was the sort of dangerous jerk who is full of swagger, but short on thinking things through…a mannerism that is uncomfortably close to the current political climate. The point is driven home to an even greater degree by the Russian manipulation of Hemmingway. One might even say collusion….

The Wastelands – Steven King

The third installment in the Dark Tower series, Wastelands made marginal improvements in redeeming the series from Calling of the Three. Roland’s Ka-tet is on the move, and incorporating more of King’s expansive world. It took a shift toward a little more of the Asimovian sci fi feel as opposed to the dystopian cowboy fantasy elements of The Gunslinger, but at least the story progressed. King’s writing in the voice of a woman of color is still cringeworthy in places. I can only hope the remaining books move back toward the more austere aesthetic of sweeping stretches of time and landscape of the original novel.

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry – Neil Degrasse Tyson

Purportedly a translation of astrophysics into popular science context, there were a lot of instances in the book that felt like listening to that professor in college who is so deep into the nuance of a particular field that they are completely incapable of teaching an intro-level class that’s relatable. Some of the concepts Tyson covers start with an assumption of scientific literacy that overreaches a bit. I generally enjoyed it, though it didn’t feel very cohesive as a work. I listened to the audiobook on this one, and honestly, I’m not sold on Tyson as a narrator. In parts he just comes off as smug.

Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

This is one of those Important Books everyone is assumed to have read, and that I’ve put off for some time. I appreciated (rather than truly enjoyed) One Hundred Years of Solitude, but wasn’t incredibly motivated to work through Marquez’s works. I enjoyed Love more than I expected to. On its face, the story of unrequited love and turbulent relationships in Columbia of the early 20th century seems like an unadorned period piece, but its relentless picking away at the illusions of overblown romantic love make the main story feel more like a play within a play, with Marquez pointing out the silliness of simplistic romanticism. As with Murakami’s Japanese sojourns, I know I’m missing some meaning in the cultural translation, but there’s enough left to be satisfying. It was interesting to read this after the Hemmingway book, because in parts it echoes some of the same “the Emperor’s clothes are not resplendent” themes, i.e. this is not heroic, this is stupid. 

Bad Dirt - Proulx

Dirt is the second of three installments in the Wyoming Stories collections which started with Close Range (the collection that spawned Brokeback Mountain, among other stories). It’s a mix of stories that steer strongly toward tall tale type characters, often to the detriment of the setting. It doesn’t feel as satisfying or fleshed out as the original collection…like an album of B-sides. That being said, it’s still Proulx, and still enjoyable. There are a few uncharacteristic misses, though, including a story told from the viewpoint of badgers, and one about a portal to Hell, that just don’t meet Proulx’s usual bar. There is a third installment of stories that I have avoided for fear that this franchise is scraping past the bottom of the barrel. 

Warlight – Michael Ondaatje

Ondaatje’s prowess in modern literature was recently reflected in winning a best-of edition of the Booker prize, in which The English Patient was selected as the best of previous prize-winners. I was excited when Warlight came out this year, and bumped it to the top of the pile. This story of family secrets and underworld characters in post-war England has some wonderful writing and a great ambiance, but falls a little short of the highwater mark for Ondaatje. In some places it feels like the story is not an adequate framework on which to hang his prose, and in some rare places, vice versa. Still an enjoyable read, but not in the same tier as Patient or Anil’s Ghost. 

A Visit from the Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan

Goon Squad was a completely random pick; I heard a colleague talking about it, and it sounded worth a try. The story collection is nominally strung together through a central character, around which a sea of aspiring musicians, drug addicts, and other predators swirl. I was surprised that the critical reaction (Pulitzer prize, etc.) was so positive for this book, which I didn’t particularly get much out of. Part of the fawning reviews seemed to focus on the “experimental” take on some aspects (one chapter is done as a PowerPoint presentation, etc.) but it all felt gimmicky to me (and didn’t, in all fairness, translate well to audiobook). Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo was stuck with the “experimental” label as well, but its experimental style served the narrative and was intrinsic to it book’s structure. Goon Squad just felt tired and contrived. It didn’t even seem to have the ambition to be pretentious. I’m still puzzled as to what people got out of this. Neither the stories or the writing really stood out to me at all.

The Historian – Jennifer Egan

Continuing the downward trajectory (though still a better work that Goon Squad), Historian is a modern day take on the Victorian vampire novel. The main story of generations of historians in pursuit of, and being pursued by, a very real and very much somewhat-alive Vlad Tepes. It’s ambitious in scope, and in places the writing is decent, but there are vast stretches of the book that feel like just shuttling characters from one expositional encounter to another. Go to another historian, find another document, lather, rinse, repeat. The anticlimactic climax and the “surprise” ending feel a bit tacked on. SPOILERS BELOW - What really threw me out of the suspension of disbelief (and why I have been picking this up and setting it down for the better part of a decade) were both the nonsensical core of the story, in which Vlad Tepes is simultaneously trying to lure historians to b’e his thrall and manage his book collection while also trying to push them away with threats of harm, and also specific thriller elements that completely break any tension with their silliness. Dracula stalks a historian and, even though no one can resist his undead powers, and he could end the historian with hardly a thought, decides to send a message by killing the historian’s cat. Dracula, Vlad Tepes, unstoppable creature of darkness. Kills a cat. I never got past that ridiculous passage.

Over Sea, Under Stone - Susan Cooper

Ok, so this may not really count, but since I'm the one counting, here it is. Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising cycle of novels is one of my cherished childhood memories. My daughter who's on the verge of 5 is finally of an age where she is capable of sitting through books with no or limited pictures. I took a risk and introduced her to Over Sea as the first book of real substance we have read together (at 250 pages of small type, with only a handful of illustrations, this is a seriously dense book). She's at that transitional point between picture books and starting to read herself, and I'm sure she'll be up to her eyeballs in whatever passes for children's lit these days, so I'm getting in a few classics while I can. The thing I loved about Cooper's books is their austerity, their timelessness, and the way they treat young readers as people, not dumbing down prose with silly names, etc. (looking at you, Rowling. Ok, not really, but a little. Plus I still think Potter is terribly derivative of Copper's Dark is Rising). We got through it, though it took a while, and I think she really liked it and was able to keep up. As with all of Cooper's books, it was a decent (if slightly more dated than Dark is Rising) read rich in British mythos and sense of place. 

Book Reviews, June-December 2017

(This post is a continuation of my yearly book list. The first half of the year's books were covered previously.)

My reading predictably slowed down as life sped up this year, which has literally been a year of fire and flood. I will think of 2017 as a challenge until it is safely in the rear view mirror, and then I will hopefully think of it no more. 

In the margins, on the commutes, in the 5 minutes before I fall asleep in the wee hours of the morning, I managed to cram a couple more books in this latter half of the year. 32 books total for the year, though I have read fairly large sections of about 7 more. I hope to put those to rest fairly early in the new year and start clearing some backlog from my stack of books. It's become large enough to exert a non-negligible gravity and has shown signs of developing rudimentary ecological systems, so I really should get on that...


The Best We Could Do - Thi Bui
I don't often include graphic novels in this list, but this was a really moving work on the quintessential American experience of immigration and building a new sense of place. The story of a Vietnamese immigrant family struggling to bridge history and culture was especially meaningful in a year so marred by xenophobia and an ugly darkness rising in this country. I don't think I place it in the same league as Maus or Persepolis, partly because I don't think the art was as integral to the storytelling (it would have been equally compelling as a novel), but definitely worth reading. 

World's Fair - E.L. Doctorow
I had previously enjoyed City of God and Welcome to Hard Times so I thought I'd read a few more of Doctorow's books this year. World's Fair recreates the sense of place of the Depression-era Bronx, through the eyes of a young boy. Some of the text is masterful, some plodding. It doesn't have much that differentiates it from similar NYC in the Depression works, and never really gels a sense of place and time and atmosphere like Chabon's Kavalier and Clay. I read one (mostly positive) review that said the author seemed to be having trouble differentiating between the voices of memoir and novel, which felt accurate. 

Loon Lake - E.L. Doctorow
As compared to Fair, Loon Lake was a bit more memorable. Another Depression-era tale, the story of a boy drifter, young girl, and somewhat two-dimensional millionaire industrialist at an isolated cabin in the Adirondacks. Even though this was described as "an experimental novel" in style, I thought the story felt very traditional, with hints of Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye, etc. The archetypes here feel well trodden, even though Doctorow's writing occasionally elevates the reading. The novel does present a very strong sense of place, even for a story that feels like a bit of a retread. While I enjoyed the story, sometimes it felt like it was in spite of Doctorow just trying to hard to shove a very traditional story into a somewhat pretentious set of forms. City of God took up some of the same "experiemental" banners, but with a story more suited to it, and a deftness greater than Lake.

Birds of Jamaica - Ann Haynes-Sutton
While this was mostly a field guide, bought in preparation for a anniversary trip to Jamaica, it was written from a much more intimate scale and thoughtful approach than many of the larger field guides for bigger areas. 


Billy Bathgate - E.L. Doctorow
I think part of my hit and miss experience with Doctorow thus far has been due to reading more of his minor works than his celebrated hits. Bathgate  is a more widely read Doctorow novel, and it's fairly easy to see why. The ground covered in this gangster novel is not entirely new, but Doctorow handles it deftly. The story revolves around the young eponymous narrator who through somewhat hackneyed pluck secures himself a place in Dutch Schultz's retinue during the gangster heyday of the 30s. The story swirls through typical gangster elements...rivalries, molls, assasinations, etc. but Doctorow manages to blow up some of the typical elements, and his characters feel well formed. The dialogue between Billy and Schultz's consiglieri Berman forms the beating core of the book. 

An American War - Omar El Akkad
I (and apparently so many others) love post-apocalyptic tales. Whether it's zombies or plague or undefined global collapse, it seems like there's some visceral thrill to pondering "what if it all just fell away and we started over?". Especially in 2017, I think we can all empathize with the underlying infatuation with contemplating a restart...a global do-over. This appeal has been tempered for me in recent years by the flood of (mostly YA) post-apocalyptic fiction, much of it derivative refuse. Even lauded, "literary" works like Whitehead's Zone One haven't done much for me (Mandel's Station 11, notwithstanding). An American War was the standout I'd been looking for. While it is not the most literary offering (it's not in the same league as McCarthy's The Road), it is exponentially better quality prose than most of this genre. The book recasts contemporary ideas of identity, radicalization, sides-versus-principles, and the divide between the personal and national experience in the form of a second civil war brought on in no small part by resource scarcity and climate change. The "protagonist" (the novel declines to lionize anyone, even while it humanizes its sometimes monstrous characters) is southern, already challenging our traditional god/bad dichotomy, and the novel follows the course of national upheaval and eventual terrorist cataclysm at a very personal, sometimes claustrophobic level. It avoids easy categories, and forces you to deal with its characters as individuals, to experience paths toward radicalization and collaboration an a fundamentally organic way.  

High Mountains of Portugal - Yann Martel
My expectations for this book were really off base, so it's hard to come back around to an objective look at it. The novel is a series of interrelated stories of widowers set in Portugal. I had expected a somewhat whimsical, magical-realism type novel similar to Life of Pi. Even a third into the book, that's mostly what was going on, like the novelization of a Wes Anderson film, with a backwards walking narrator driving an automobile through superstitious peasant towns on a nigh-quixotic quest. Imagine Wes Anderson directing 100 Years of Solitude, and you're about where this ended up. Then it got really dark. Then it got really weird. In the end it was a satisfying, if less accessible, work than Pi, that meditates on our reactions to loss (in a way that, if you'll permit me me to pretentiously reference another author yet again, reminded me a lot of Murakami) The eventual reveals and connections are subtle and vast, and the writing (even at its most Martel-ish) is enjoyable.   

Mr. Splitfoot - Samantha Hunt
Splitfoot is an interwoven tale across two generations that is hard to begin to describe. It follows two women on simultaneous (from the prose standpoint) and divergent (from chornological standpoint) journeys to a similar location. In one an orphan and faux spiritualist....no, wait...in the other a mute and her pregnant niece go to....wow...It's hard to really say anything about the book without being a spoiler. The book's revelations match pace with the women on their separate journies, and the connections start to reveal toward the end, when you suddenly see both stories in a completely different light. I heard it described as a "fever dream" and that's pretty apt. 

Bones of Paradise - Jonis Agee
There are times when you doubt an author based on a previous work, and then you give them one more chance and you really fall in love with a book. This is not one of those occasions. Bones of Paradise was a clunky, new-western novel about a ranching family embroiled in a murder mystery that stirs up generational...oh my God, I can't even bring myself to finish typing that it was so formulaic. . Nominally literature, the writing was about on par with a Zane Gray/Louis L'amour western-of-the-week (and that's not an insult to those authors, just reflecting that this felt like one of those more than a denser work). However, while Grey/L'amour at least give you a straight-ahead satisfying cowboy story. The sad thing is that the book had the trappings of a good story. In the hands of Annie Proulx or Cormac McCarthy this thing would have been dynamite. I read The Weight of Dreams several years ago and pretty much felt the same way, so I probably won't be reading anymore Agee. There were a few notable characters that really felt flushed out, but the way Agee clumsily knocked them about in 2 dimensional settings was cringe-worthy. 

21- Patrick O'Brian
I loved the 20 completed Aubrey-Maturin novels by Patrick O'Brian (sailing ships in the Napoleonic War - the movie Master and Commander was based on his novels). Unfortunately he died before completing his 21st. In the time honored tradition of making a buck on the deceased, they cobbled together some notes and the first chapter or two of an unedited work and called it 21 - the unfinished something or other who cares because it shoul dnot have been. That's probably not very charitable of me, the fan outcry for more of his work is pretty strong, and even knowing it was a snippet probably left alone, I still read it. But there's really nothing of value here. Better to turn the last page of Blue at the Mizzen, and let Jack Aubrey sail off under a fine press of canvas to an unknowable, but assumedly grand, destiny.  

The Ancient Minstrel - Jim Harrison
Jim Harrison's novels (and mostly novellas) are a mix of austere, epic writing like Legends of the Fall and The River Swimmer and more crass (but well written) banality of the Upper Peninsula like the retired detective stories of The Great Leader. The Ancient Minstrel was a mix of the two, with a beautiful story of a lone woman carving a life for herself sandwiched between a weirdly rambling fictitious biography of a writer and a really uncomfortable (though satisfyingly ended) continuation of a character from some of his previous Upper Peninsula novels. Even though this collection is somewhat lacking in general, and especially in terms of connection as a single work, his writing is still entertaining and poetic.  If you hadn't read Harrison before I would not start here. 

Brown Dog - Jim Harrison
Brown Dog was a much more satisfying collection of stories about a single character. Set in the UP like many of his stories, it follows a period in the life of a semi-educated man of mixed white and Native American ancestry. The weighty sense of place and unique UP culture meshes well with the portrayal of poverty and characters of the stories. The iterative set of tales feels almost like a ring cycle of stories, different seasons in the man's life and relationships. It delves into Harrison's usual fascination with the base human instincts and ultimately comic fallibility, but in a less over the top way than Great Leader. The story takes Brown Dog through subsistence level but carefree existence to greater connections and responsibilities. As usual, Harrison doesn't pull punches in laying humanity bare to its uglier, sillier aspects, but using Brown Dog as a lens his focus is less on his character's shortcomings, but on commenting on the discrepancy between how we view those, and how he views ours, in terms of society as a whole. The audiobook to this was exceptionally well read. 

All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr
I was happy to end the year on this novel of the converging lives of a young, blind French girl and a young German soldier in World War II. While that premise may sound like it's been done to death, the intricacy and detail of their stories makes for captivating writing. A blind girl grows up in the confines of the museum for which her father works, in the midst of a mutli-layered images of puzzles and lockworks, while a German orphan obsessed with mathematics is channeled into the German state and war machine. Eventually their stories converge, compress, and explode outward. The layers and precision of writing here were happy surprises for me; I had only picked up the book because it was available at the library and vaguely remembered it winning some award (Pulitzer, among others). I'm glad I did, and will now have to explore some of Doerr's other works. 

Book reviews, January-June 2017

I debated on whether to make this post. This blog was something I enjoyed for several years. I still love the idea of it. I just have little time for it anymore. I still find myself thinking "hey, I should blog that", but mostly just end up posting it to Facebook (O tempora, o mores). These book lists seem to be the last gasp of what feels increasingly like a private game with the universe. 

This time I'll keep it simple. Here, in no particular order, are the books I read these last 6 months. I loved a few, loathed others (your mileage may vary).

The Drunken Botanist- Amy Stewart

Stewart's exploration of the botannical underpinnings of various alcoholic mixers and elixirs is excellent applied science geekery, at least in concept. Stewart offers a sometimes-insightful look at the connections between the science, history, and alchemy of cocktail ingredients without getting too deep in the weeds in any sphere. Although the descriptions seem to wane in exuberance as the book wears on (and wear on it does...), it's still a worthwhile read. I only wish she’s spent more time on the actual botany.

Wolf Hall - Hillary Mantel

The writing in this work of Tudor-era historical fiction seems like it's better than it needed to be. I don't usually love this genre, but the literature-grade dialogue and interplay between Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell is handled deftly and with great deference to its historical superstructure. I admit, I got this on audiobook because I desperately needed something for a long ride, and it was the only thing I could find in a five-minute search of my library's website. That being said, I ended up enjoying it far more than I thought I would.

The Old Ace in the Hole - Annie Proulx

Proulx continues to prove herself a master of place and character. This novel of a wayward son scouting pig farm locations and his interactions with small town characters is less epic in scope and timeline than many of her works. It feels to some degree like an elongated story from one of her Wyoming stories collections. It's a tribute to her writing that a novel in which nothing really much happens, set in a place I don't really care about, was so engaging. It was especially poignant as an illustration of the mindset and psychic landscape of midwest rural America, given current political atmospheres.

Dead Wake - Eric Larson

I keep hoping that Larson will produce another book as entertaining as Devil in the White City, but either his style or the subjects he selects invariably fall short. Dead Wake delves into the time and events surrounding the sinking of the Lusitania, a catalyst for the leadup to American involvement in WWI. For such a turbulent era, and such a momentous event, Larson's book feels more like a shallow summary. Larson does an adequate job of giving a sense of both the zeitgeist through minor characters and details, especially in terms of the German Uboats, but it never feels like he delves deep enough into anything to really provide its flavor. It was readable, but a bit bland given the incredible depth of story and drama the real event surrounded.

Absalom, Absalom - William Faulkner

With the exception of As I Lay Dying, Faulkner's work all blend and bleeds at the edges to me. This is, however, not a bad thing, and takes nothing from his work. I just have a hard time commenting on one work without connecting it to everything else. Absalom's allegory of the decay and dissolution of the antebellum south through a near-mythological southern family line is every bit as masterful as The Sound and the Fury (with which it shares a protagonist). The novel manages to encapsulate Faulkner's love/hate relationship with the south without being too on-the-nose in its symbolism. The subtle use of unreliable narrators and stories told from multiple viewpoints, unraveling as the novel goes on, is a nice counterpoint to the near-apocalyptic imagery throughout. I would go so far as to argue that this is a better book for high school English classes than Sound.

A Model World (and Other Stories)– Michael Chabon

Even in this earlier work, Chabon’s flair for dense, kinetic writing is present. None of these short pieces really stands out as a game-changing story in and of itself, but they offer a sampling of things to come. The latter section of coming of age stories cuts to the bone of family dynamics and disruption.  I had to go back and read a synopsis to remember the narratives, but there were several images and sentences that stuck with me. It felt like a literary sketch book rather than solid stories, but one filled with such captivating work that it was nonetheless a satisfying read.

Choke - Pahluniak

The best thing I can say about this novel of sexual addiction and subculture is that it was the least disappointing of the Pahluniak novels I read this year. I wasn’t particularly impressed by the writing, the story, or the shock value. There is some deft satire on selling image to the gullible, some of Pahluniak’s dark humor shines through in places, and there are some poignant themes of rebuilding. Overall it feels like there’s a good story that just didn’t come into focus. 

Blue at the Mizzen – Patrick O’Brian

Last year I read almost all (19!) of O’Brian’s acclaimed Aubrey/Maturin cycle of novels. Blue at the Mizzen is the last, other than an unfinished 21^st novel, of these stories of 1800’s naval life and spy intrigue. The book is lighter on action, which was a little disappointing (as a big knock-down finale would have served the series well). Given that the author didn’t intend this to be the final novel, or to die before continuing the series, this is fairly excusable. Jack Aubrey finally gets his admiralship, Steven Maturin ties of up some loose ends of a multi-novel story arc of South American revolution, and the lives of the characters generally are left on an uplifting note. It continued to be a blend of Jane Austin-esque romance, Joseph Conrad-esque spy intrigue, and straight-up naval battles.

It Can’t Happen Here – Sinclair Lewis

Yes, I read this along with half the other horrified people in the country this year. Lewis’ story of the growth and eventual downfall of an American fascist government is chilling in the minutia, but fairly heavy-handed in the broader narrative. If we weren’t so busy dealing with a real Buzz Windrip of our own, this book may have been more enjoyable. As it is, it felt more like a redundant reminder than a forewarning. At some point Lewis abandons all subtly and realism in his depiction of the regime’s excesses, which takes away from the underlying strength of the message and devolves into something less relatable and more comical. Real evil is in the conglomeration of minor betrayals.

The Great Leader – Jim Harrison

Harrison is an immensely talented author, but in a very bifurcated way. His more austere, epic works (Legends of the Fall, The River Swimmer, etc) seem almost the work of a different writer than his grittier, excess-of-human-nature stories. The Great Leader is the story of a down-and-out, past his prime detective struggling with banal minutia of divorce, retirement, and drinking/other vices. He cannot let a case go after retirement (the ur-motif of countless police thrillers), and the novel recounts his dogged but wayward pursuit of a cult leader. Everyone in the novel is a collection of human failures, colliding unavoidably in a morass of collected human failure. It’s a tribute to Harrison that what could have been a formulaic thriller instead is elevated by his understated literary prowess. Foremost is his skill at undressing the pretense and romanticism of human experience to lay bare our base natures in a way that creates fully fleshed, imminently fallible characters.

Gilead – Marilynne Robinson

I really wanted to like Gilead’s exploration of the clash between harsh realities of segregation, failure, and family ties with quiet theological reflection of a small town minister. But the telling of the stories through the minister’s staid and reserved tone is like making a copy of a vibrant painting with muted watercolors. Robinson’s world is full of intriguing characters, from a radical abolitionist preacher to ne’er do well prodigal sons, but the filtering of their stories through the human equivalent of Nyquil makes their realities unnecessarily gentle. I’m sure there are some deeper reflections on gentleness and submission in faith in the face of the horrors of the world, but the latter never feels fully fleshed, and the former dominates the conversation.

Damned/Doomed – Chuck Pahluniak

The first two books of this unfinished trilogy about the adventures of a deceased teenage girl in a capricious hellscape afterlife left me completely unconcerned as to whether there will ever be a concluding chapter. Pahluniak abandons all subtlty and craft and just piles on poorly written excess after excess. Even his usual dark humor and satire is completely fumbling and unformed. The first novel was passable, but disappointing. The retconning second novel was so poorly executed it managed to retroactively damage the first.  Even the cover art on Doomed seems like they got an intern to sketch something in pencil right before publication.  

The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

Ok, so yes, this was another “book to accompany the devolution of the American Democracy” read. That being said, Atwood’s story surprised me with its subtlty and the chilling effect of its small touches. This is not the over-the-top insanity of Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here, it’s a novel of claustrophobic horrors and intimate betrayals, slowly revealed. Atwood’s account of a post-apocalyptic future in which fertile women are enslaved to the wealthy as brood mares is equally a commentary on fascism as it is a feminist exploration of control. It could have done either and be satisfying, and could have simply been a sci fi pulp piece and been a good enough premise to be worthwhile. Its strength is not in having a wild premise, but in crafting a world very like our own, just shifted in jarring ways that create a dissonance rather than a shock. What really drew me in was not just the wealth of undertones the story hints at, but Atwood’s skill at revealing the horrors and injustice with a surgeon’s scalpel rather than a blunt mallet. I’ve only ever read her “The Year of the Flood”, which was not entirely enjoyable,  so I had no expectations for Handmaid. I enjoyed the story, but also her style on this novel. As with other works I really liked this year, it felt like it took a moderate premise and elevated it to literature-grade storytelling. Even if the storyline hadn’t been so poignant to the current war on women’s health, this is a strong piece on its own merits.

Norse Mythology – Neil Gaiman

As blasphemy as this may be to my general sensibilities about the lingering importance of reading actual books in a digital world, part of me has the sneaking suspicion that the absolute best way to experience Gaiman’s work is through an audiobook in which he is the narrator. Gaiman’s writing is good, at times great, but his greatest strength is as a teller of stories. He has a voice and storytelling ability that seem to transcend whatever literary limitations his writing may have.  I don’t even think of him as an author so much as a storyteller who works a lot in novel form. Norse Mythology is the sum and substance of that fundamental character. Norse mythos in general derive from an oral tradition of character-focused stories. It’s not surprising that they have been a great influence to Gaiman (See: American Gods, etc.), but that his style would be such a great match for retelling these myths. Gaiman doesn’t completely reinterpret the classical Eddas as much as he adds flavor, fleshes out characters, and weaves connections. It doesn’t end up being my favorite of his works, but it was a very enjoyable listen. Like all good storytellers, Gaiman takes a universally shared set of stories, and then tells them through his own voice and imagination.

South of the Border, West of the Sun - Murakami

My appreciation of Murakami continues to grow the more of his works I read (at some point I’ll get around to the long-delayed 1Q84). I still feel like I’m missing some of the subtext and tone that doesn’t transcend the strong Japanese themes of his characters’ worlds. But his ability to meld messy, honest human emotion and relationships with hints of Ishiguro-esque unreliable narration and magical realism make his reads challenging and rewarding. South is another story of star crossed love, but serves mostly as a reflection on our ties to our pasts, and the tangible affects them have on us. The protagonist’s vacillation between the reality of his family and business and the (maybe) ghost of a former love, and the past she represents, is handled exceptionally well. Some authors are masters of subtle cuts, some of devastating reveals. Murakami somehow manages to combine both in an organic, human way. I’m sure there are deeper reflections on post-war Japanese society and transition here that I’m missing, but the story is satisfying enough to keep me from being too concerned.

The Revenant – Michael Punke

Oddly, Punke’s period revenge thriller is unintentionally the third fur trappers/voyageurs related novel I’ve been reading this year (still trying to clear some space to properly enjoy Proulx’s Barkskins). The writing is short of literary, but the story of a fur trapper fighting for survival and revenge after being left for dead in the wake of a grizzly mauling is a page turner. Punke’s writing is just sort of…there, but decent enough not to distract from the pace and telling of the story. I found out afterwards that the story is based to some extent on an actual historical person, which reduced Punke a bit in my estimation, but simultaneously increased my interest in the story. I have not yet seen the movie.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North – Richard Flanagan

Flanagan is a new author for me, and I’m excited to have become acquainted with his works. Narrow Road is the story of an Australian’s experience as a POW in WWII Japan, and the impact of his notoriety later in life, but includes so many other times and perspectives that it’s hard to really summarize it well. While the WWII POW motif has been over-, and poorly, done as of late in a series of fairly schmaltzy-but-popular works (looking at you, Unbroken), Narrow Road’s focus is far broader and more literary (I know I keep using “literary” as if it was some sort of litmus test of measurable value. I recognize it’s just a subjective thing. When I use it, what I’m trying to get at is a work that focuses as strongly on the crafting of the language and style as it does on the story.) Flanagan’s army surgeon moves through beautiful set pieces in a story that reflects on the infirmity of character, and the discrepancies between the images the world assigns us and our internal realities. It reminded me a lot, without being at all derivative, of Ondaatje’s The English Patient as being a strong character study walking through robustly rendered landscapes of war.

Afterword - Abandoned Books

I try not to abandon books, but as I have gotten older, and the endless afternoons of youth have dwindled to stolen reading moments at night, etc, I have less patience for books I don’t enjoy. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy came highly recommended, but I couldn’t get through it. It felt like a poorly executed memoir that wasn’t particularly relevant to the broader social forces it was touted as “explaining”. I also decided to finally sit down and read a collection of Arthurian Romance, but just couldn’t get through it. I appreciate the style and form and its historical significance, but in the end it was mostly knights getting into random fights with other knights for unapparent reasons and lengthy hyperbole on the knightly character of knightly characters. 

Gastronomic Interlude - Cinnamon Basil, Two Ways

My Year in Books, Part 2

It's somewhat telling that the last blog post I made was for the first half of the year's reading.  I don't know if it's the gradual decline of blogs in the face of other social media, my increased parental holdings, or just the dumpster fire that is 2016, but this blog has been pretty neglected. I think it's time to re-imagine what I want to do with it.

Before we get that far, though, I have a second half-year of books to attend to. As usual, a tip of the hat to the good folks over at Are There Any More Cookies and A Fiercer Delight and A Fiercer Discontent, from whose book review motif  I continuously steal mercilessly draw inspiration. 

I read/listened to a personally-large number of books this latter part of the year (31, for a yearly total of 48, or 4 a month). Sadly, I mostly engaged in a steadfast avoidance of  the Serious Literature that has piled up on my nightstand (Sorry Proulx, Faulkner, and Murakami...I'll get to you yet...) and opted for lighter fare. I burned out on news during my commute pretty early in the election cycle, so my audiobook quotient is much higher than usual. I started reading a dozen more books, but either ran out of time or wasn't in the right place to finish them.

To aid in a brief skim of this post (and in preparation for the upcoming TL;DR era of a Trump presidency) I have added one line summary titles for each book that get to its essence. 

1	"Jesus Christ: Super Stark." Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth – Reza Aslan Azlan is at best a pop historian. This is not a universally accepted portrayal. There are historical inaccuracies in this book about historical inaccuracies about our perception of Jesus. I recognize all these things (and I also recognize that at least some of the criticism of Aslan's scholarship is from people whose scholarship errs in the other direction). All that being said, I found this book about separating the mythological Jesus from the historical Jesus an interesting perspective. Aslan has a decent narrative, even with his tendency to give too much credence to suggestions about the gaps in the historical record. I can take or leave a lot of the details, but what was most enlightening for me was the context the book provides. Even while critics quibble over the minutae, Zealot does a competent job of widening the lens on the Jesus story. Getting a better flavor of the political and social context of the time puts the main Jesus narrative (whether one subscribes to it or not) in a different light. What ultimately made this particular messiah candidate (there was more competition than I realized) the one that history remembers is a matter of debate, but one worth talking about. I won't say I really enjoyed it, but it was worth the read. It's a stark portrayal, sometimes errant, but an informative look at the time and place if not the man.
2	"Amy Poehler being intermittently funny about Amy Poehler" Yes Please – Amy Poehler This was a last minute "I need an audiobook for a 3 hour car ride" selection. Poehler mixes her personal story (She did a lot of improv before SNL/Parks and Rec. There, I just saved you several hours) with some fragmented bits of philosophy. There are some funny bits, but a lot of it just feels like small talk, disjointed and noncommittal. To its credit, there's no way one can hope that a book by a comedic actor will be as good as the writing for their character. But if I'm being honest, I was hoping this would be more "Leslie Knope" and less "obscure early SNL skit character". It felt more like a victory lap than a cohesive book.
3	"Like a 'Sexy Buccaneer' Halloween costume; it's all about pirate booty" Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson I never read Treasure Island as a kid. So I read it. There's not a lot of nuance here, it's just a straight-ahead boy's adventure story. It was interesting to see the birth of the literary pirate tradition. There are some books written for children which transcend their genre and remain relevant throughout the ages. This is probably not one of them.
4	"Not even the Battle of El Alamein was this dry and British..." H is for Hawk – Helen MacDonald Hawk revolves in an intensely close orbit around a woman's trials and tribulations in raising a Gyrfalcon for falconry after a recent death in the family. The real heart of the book, though, is an equally brutal and subtle take on loss and recovery. It's unapologetically English, understated and fussy at times, but it cuts to the bone unexpectedly in its portrayal of the claustrophobic, fractious obsession of putting order to dissaray, and losing one's self in a pursuit as a coping mechanism. Under the rules and order and methodology of the character's falconry lurks the barely contained, dark, messy cacophany of the human heart. MacDonald brings out that interplay masterfully.
5	"Aziz Ansari, MSW" Modern Romance – Aziz Ansari Ansari makes a surpringly earnest, honest, and emotionally relevant look at romance in the new digital era. There's humor, but I'm surprised how much of this book is real, social science-lite, inquiry and evaluation. This is not intended primarily as a comedic work, but its infused with a humor that's far more emotionally honest than Poehler's improv shtick. I love that this really feels like a sincere effort by Ansari to wrap his arms around a topic. If you liked "Master of None", which you should, you'll dig this book. If anything, I feel like it had room to grow. While none of the insights are truly earth-shattering, they do have a sense of human realness that's absent in more scholarly works.
6	"Horror (of real life) stories" Werewolves in their Youth – Michael Chabon Chabon is unquestionably a master of character, dialogue, and sense of place. While I enjoyed this collection of short stories about dissolution of relationships and misanthropy, there were few that were ultimately memorable. There were some passages that were outstanding, and what felt like the kernels of great stories, all tied together with his amazing style, but it didn't really gel together as something I'll take much away from other than the enjoyment of his style. I still prefer the freedom to stretch his story-telling legs that longer works afford him (Pittsburgh, notwithstanding).
7	"Wait, Alexander Hamilton's not Latino?". 1776 – David McCullough I admit it, I read this mostly because Chernow's Hamilton wasn't available at the library. As much as 1776 is often held up as the exemplary popular work on the early Revolution, it really came off as more of a primer than a comprehensive work. It's well written and readable, and it's a decent balance of an honest look at the revolution in 1776 that doesn't devolve into revisionism. It feels a little incomplete, like a tasting of a larger work. In fairness, the explosion of Revolutionary War pop history franchises (Turn, Hamilton, etc) means 1776 has to cut through more noise than it once did.
8-25	"Cannons! Spies! Dialogue! Romance! More Dialogue! More Cannons!" The Aubrey/Maturin Novels – Patrick O'Brian Remember that time Russel Crowe made that movie about sailing ships, and it was halfway decent even though it has a ridiculously long name? Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World  was based on a beloved series of novels about British naval ships in the Napoleonic wars. The 20+ novels can be thought of as one 5000 page epic (or even romans-flueve) charting the evolving friendship and adventures of a naval captain (Aubrey) and his surgeon/intelligence officer (Maturin). I expected these to just be light historical fare, but they were engaging and literary in their own right. It's like Jane Austen and Joseph Conrad had a baby and then gave it some cannons. O'Brian focuses far more on dialogue and intrigue than sea battles, but the sea battles alone are worth the price of admission. I was just thinking recently that I tend to enjoy when authors don't spend a lot of time on exposition...not explaining every technology and acronym and plot device, just turning on the viewer to their world and letting us pick things up in context. O'Brian does that masterfully, giving readers no quarter in use of naval terminology and period politics, but in a way that ends up being incredibly satisfying. You don't need to know that a fully-rigged ship has at least a square-rigged fore, main, and mizzen mast to enjoy the series. The pacing of both the action and quiet moments is consistently well-timed. I ended up reading/listening to 19 of the 21 novels in the series over the course of the last 6 months. The inestimable Robert Hardy's stellar narration on the audiobooks added a considerable amount to my enjoyment. I'm honestly sad that there won't be any more of these books (O'Brian died mid-book). When I found out I'm pretty sure I remember clenching my fists at the havens and yelling "NOOO WHY COULDN'T YOU HAVE TAKEN GEORGE RR MARTIN INSTEAD???".
26	"Cowboy D&D" The Gunslinger – Steven King Confession: I don't read a lot of Steven King. Don't get me wrong, he has a wonderfully dark imagination. I just don't like his writing much, and I think he's been phoning it in for years now. And I say this as someone who will never, ever, have a fraction of his ability. I admire his work, I just don't enjoy it much. I am probably one of the few who will defend Kubrick for making a masterpiece out of The Shining, as opposed to the great-idea-but-clumsy-execution of King's original novel. In that vein, I never gave King's magnum opus Dark Tower series about a cowboy flavored post-apocalyptic fantasy world much thought when it was originally being published. However, I ran across the graphic novel adaptation of his work with art by Jae Lee and others. I was immediately hooked on the master-class in world building that King teaches through this creation. I finally picked up a copy of the first novel, The Gunslinger,  and was pleasantly surprised. It's a little hokey in places, but aligns well with my preference toward not giving your reader too much to go on. King drops you into a fully-realized world and gradually flashbacks you pieces of context. I started on the 2nd and 3rd book, and wasn't as impressed, but will probably getting around to reading the whole series at some point. The writing is better than similar  series of long books with lots of characters (lookin' at you, George RR Martin). I guess I'll have to re-evaluate my unearned disdain for King.
27	"Post-apocalyptic hippies and the women who love them" Year of the Flood – Margret Atwood So, it's hard to start a trilogy on book 2 (I mistakenly thought this book was the first in its series). Year mostly tells post-apocalyptic survival stories from several characters' viewpoints, who connect through a group of end time hippy cultists. I have not read anything by Atwood before, and to be honest, wasn't overly impressed by Flood. The writing is ok, but not compelling in and of itself (my wife assures me the first and third books of this  series are better.) The story seems like it touches on some interesting elements, and is fairly brutal with its main characters and adroit in its prodding at cult mentality, but it feels like a side narrative to a more interesting story. I haven't decided if I'll read the whole series. It didn't help that I listened to this on audiobook, and they kept cutting to some weird folk rock songs every other chapter.
28	"Neil Gaiman reading Neil Gaiman stories. Shut up and take my money." Smoke and Mirrors – Neil Gaiman Neil Gaiman is an incomparable story-teller. That doesn't mean he has the best writing style (it's still usually pretty good), or that he achieves masterworks of literature for the ages, but he excels at weaving the primordial fabric of stories from pure imagination. This collection of short stories drifts from horror to whimsy to humor (the lighter side of the Cthulhu mythos) and even once into some odd erotic bits, but it all feels very complete.  More importantly, the collection works as a collection. Hearing it in his own voice on the audiobook was frosting on the cake ( the good kind of frosting, not the sort that leaves fluorescent blue all over your tongue and tastes like over-sweet chemicals.)
29	"Better than the movie. Also, see above re: shutting up and taking my money." Stardust – Neil Gaiman Another Gaiman audiobook for a book I've never read, even though I saw the (admittedly quite well adapted) movie. Having Gaiman as the reader adds an inordinate amount to the feel and pacing of the book. It falls somewhere between the great story but so-so writing of American Gods, and the achievement of writing brilliance and pretty good story of The Ocean at the End of the Lane. As with all Gaiman's books, the introduction is actually worth reading and gives a lot of context for this grown-up fairy tale.
30	"David Sedaris back when he was funny. ish." Holidays on Ice – David Sedaris I don't like David Sedaris as much as I'm supposed to like him. There, I've said it. At his best, he has a bitter and emotionally honest humor. At his worst, the darkness greatly overbalances the humor. On the average, he feels a lot like a second class New Yorker cartoon a lot of the time. This late 90's collection of holiday pieces has some of his best/most well known (Santaland Diaries) and it's a nice counterpoint to the plastic-fantastic wave of Christmas schlock that's upon us. That being said, there is some remarkably dark stuff in here. I listened to this as an audiobook read by Sedaris...I'm still on the fence as to whether that improves or hinders his work.
31	"They printed out the website." Atlas Obscura – Foer, et al.  Atlas Obscura is one of my favorite websites. It contains write-ups of odd places, natural phenomena, odd histories, etc. of the world. When they came out with a book, I was skeptical. It promised to be a curated selection of writings on the website, but it feels like they just grouped them by location and called it a day. The book lacks much of the accompanying pictures and media of the website. They attempt to duplicate the feature linking readers to similar entries by providing small summaries, but it ends up being a lot of redundancies and clumsiness. Unlike collections from other sites (Onion, for example), the book format just doesn't seem to work for Atlas Obscura. I'd rather just read it on the interactive, searchable, brilliant website.