Saturday, November 27, 2010

Breakfast of Champions

Just finished re-reading Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions and, with this go 'round, it has become my favorite of his novels (making it second only to Welcome To The Monkey House as my favorite of all his work). The voice is pure Vonnegut (literally; he serves as the first person narrator) and what is hackneyed gimmick when Stephen King does it -writing himself into his own novel- is brilliant fun when Vonnegut does. He writes about humanity as a bunch of machines and yet this observation, in his hands, only serves to make us all more human. He cares enough about comedy to take it seriously and enough about tragedy to find the humor in it. Vonnegut's writing is always as full of pathos as it is passion, but nevermore in his novel about what it means to be human.

Friday, November 26, 2010

11-26-10

Fiction/Biography/Memoir/History
  • The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis by Lydia Davis
  • Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
  • The Priest by Gerard O'Donovan
  • The Savage City by T.J. English
  • Shadow & Claw by Gene Wolfe
  • To The End of the Land by David Grossman
Philosophy/Theology
  • After You Believe by N.T. Wright
  • Common Prayer by Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
  • The Sabbath by Abraham Heschel
  • Spiritual Writings by Soren Kierkegaard
Re-Reading
  • Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
  • Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Sunday, November 21, 2010

11-21-10

Fiction/Biography/Memoir/History
  • The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis by Lydia Davis
  • Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
  • The Savage City by T.J. English
  • Shadow & Claw by Gene Wolfe
  • To The End of The Land by David Grossman
Philosophy/Theology
  • After You Believe by N.T. Wright
  • Common Prayer by Shane Claiborne
  • The Sabbath by Abraham Heschel
  • Spiritual Writings by Soren Kierkegaard
Re-Reading
    • Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
    • Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

    Friday, November 19, 2010

    Other Possible Contenders

    A list of books that I meant to read and plan to read that may, in fact, have made my best of 2010 list, had I read them in time:
    • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
    • Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
    • Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
    • The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
    • Just Kids by Patti Smith

    Thursday, November 18, 2010

    11-18-10

    Fiction/Memoir/Biography/History
    • The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis by Lydia Davis
    • Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
    • The Savage City by T.J. English
    • Shadow & Claw by Gene Wolfe
    • To The End of The Land by David Grossman
    Philosophy/Theology
    • After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre
    • After You Believe by N.T. Wright
    • The Present Age by Soren Kierkegaard
    • The Sabbath by Abraham Heschel

    Monday, November 15, 2010

    11-15-10

    Fiction/Memoir/Biography/History
    • The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis by Lydia Davis
    • Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
    • The Four Stages of Cruelty by Keith Hollihan
    • The Savage City by T.J. English
    • Shadow & Claw by Gene Wolfe
    • To The End of The Land by David Grossman
    Philosophy/Theology
    • After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre
    • After You Believe by N.T. Wright
    • The Present Age by Soren Kierkegaard
    • The Sabbath by Abraham Heschel

    Saturday, November 13, 2010

    Best Books of 2010

    1. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
    2. The Instructions by Adam Levin
    3. The Book of Harold by Owen Egerton
    4. The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer
    5. Welcome To Utopia by Karen Valby
    6. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
    7. A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
    8. Let's Take The Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell
    9. Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself by David Lipsky
    10. The Passage by Justin Cronin

    Tuesday, November 9, 2010

    The Walking Dead and Y: The Last Man

    I am a comic book nerd. And just because I haven't bought a comic book in over a decade doesn't diminish my love for comic books and for the graphic novel. But it does mean I'm less familiar with what's out there and sometimes have to catch up.


    Two series that I've been meaning to catch up on for awhile now are The Walking Dead and Y: The Last Man. Both had an intriguing premise (a zombie novel that doesn't focus all its attention on zombies and a story about the last man on earth) and both had been talked up by numerous co-workers. The Walking Dead was what I went with first, mostly because it was the one a co-worker lent me first.


    I was disappointed. I like the premise and even the plot, but found the characters and dialogue to be clunky, at best. While I appreciate a zombie apocalypse that focuses more time and attention on how to, as a human survivor, do the day to day of said apolcalypse, the one dimensional characters and sometimes silly prose makes it read like how I imagine Pride and Prejudice and Zombies reads. I like the general idea, but I wanted more done with it. That said, I saw the first AMC episode of the show based on the graphic novel and dug it very much. Turns out all it needed was the Frank Darabont treatment. That discovered; I will be done with the graphic novels and fixing my attention on the television show.


    Y: The Last Man has turned out to be much better and it, frankly, had a better chance of going awry. The last man on earth among a planet of women? This could have been a one note joke about some dudebro getting laid. It isn't. The way this story addresses politics; personal, sexual, and international; is nothing short of brilliant. The story is sharp and the characters and their relationships are spot on. It paces like a great movie and needs no help from Darabont to do so. I've flown through 3/4 of the series in just two days and am as excited to see where it's going as I will be sad to see it end. If you have the chance, I highly recommend picking this up.
    Fiction/Memoir
    • The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis by Lydia Davis
    • Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
    • The Four Stages of Cruelty by Keith Hollihan
    • Shadow & Claw by Gene Wolfe
    • Y: The Last Man series by Brian K. Vaughan
    Philosophy/Theology
    • After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre
    • After You Believe by N.T. Wright
    • The Good and Beautiful God by James Bryan Smith
    • The Present Age by Soren Kierkegaard
    • The Sabbath by Abraham Heschel

    Tuesday, November 2, 2010

    11-2-10

    Fiction/Memoir
    • The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis by Lydia Davis
    • Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
    • The Four Stages of Cruelty by Keith Hollihan
    • Shadow & Claw by Gene Wolfe
    • Skippy Dies by Paul Murray
    Philosophy/Theology
    • After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre
    • After You Believe by N.T. Wright
    • The Good and Beautiful God by James Bryan Smith
    • The Present Age by Soren Kierkegaard
    • The Sabbath by Abraham Heschel

    Monday, November 1, 2010

    White Noise

    Maybe you can't really appreciate DeLillo in high school. No, that's letting myself off too easily. There are surely a lot of precocious high school readers who dig DeLillo. Maybe it takes 3 or 4 authors to get to DeLillo from, say, Ralph Ellison, a favorite of mine, even at 17. Maybe you just have to give DeLillo a second try before you can ever appreciate DeLillo for the first time. Maybe you don't, but I do. I did. And this is my blog.


    I read White Noise my senior year of high school and I hated it. Loathed it. Disliked it enough to use it as my go to reference in college in order to a) show that I was the kind of guy who had read DeLillo and b) show that I was the kind of guy who could dismiss him. I don't like some writer just because you and your literary buddies say he's a genius! I'm contrarian! But not because I don't understand!! Because there's nothing to understand!!!


    I could be a tad unbearable in college. That said, I really did hate that White Noise book.


    I've mellowed a bit since college, but DeLillo's name still comes up from time to time (I read a lot and work in a bookstore) and I always say something along the lines of "Yeah, I don't know what it is, I just can't stand that guy's writing. I'm not saying he's a bad writer, I just don't get it."


    Then a combination of forces came together in such a way as to compel me to revisit DeLillo; specifically, White Noise. I've become quite the David Foster Wallace fan, and he was quite the DeLillo fan. I had a co-worker, whose tastes I respect quite a bit, talk about how much they enjoy DeLillo's work. And I had a conversation with two co-workers and a customer about books we were required to read in high school that we revisited later in life and found out we enjoyed. While White Noise was never required reading, I decided to give it a go.


    I loved it. Really, truly loved this book. It was funny and sad and weird in all the ways I like fiction to be. I love the dialogue, the plot, the characters, and the dialogue. Seriously, I love the dialogue.


    White Noise gets dismissed by some as a rather obvious and heavy-handed take on consumer America, but I thought it was obvious when it needed to be and subtle when it didn't. It's somehow world weary and winsome and once, which is much of what I love about Wallace and much of what, I imagine, Wallace loved about DeLillo.


    I cannot wait to read more of DeLillo's work and am taking suggestions from those who are fans. Let me know where's the next place you'd go.


    But, mostly, I am writing to remind myself, and you as well, to give a "bad book" (or album or movie or some such) a second chance. You may discover a new favorite you would have missed.


    That said, I've given Gravity's Rainbow and Ulysees their fair share of chances, and I just hate those books.