The Doll's House

    This is the third and final selection from "jumpstart on January," as I will be saving two selections for the assigned month (beginning in less than a week). All clear? Great. In the meantime, I just finished The Doll's House, the second of ten in the collected Sandman graphic novels by Neil Gaiman. When the first in the set was assigned, a couple of month's back, I mentioned that I liked the potential of the story and characters more than the story and characters themselves. This is often true when it comes to the beginning of a series of books or television shows. I wondered, at the time, whether I'd enjoy reading on in the Sandman series.
    I did. This second book begins with a fully developed title character, which provides the story with a strong foundation to build upon. The story that is built, of a woman named Rose Walker who may be a vortex, is often dark, sometimes demented, and always dreamlike. Gaiman's interplay between reality and dreams and his questioning of whether reality is any more "real," is deftly done. Having long despised the "it was all a dream" device as a copout, I was pleased to see Gaiman imbue it with real meaning. This book made me both afraid and excited to go to sleep. It made me wonder what I might dream and ready to get started.

The Unvarnished New Testament

Based upon a radical and startling premise, Andy Gaus' Unvarnished New Testament asks "Why not present the New Testament simply as it appears in the original Greek?" The result is something inviting and invigorating, a refreshing look at familiar (for me) texts. What Eugene Peterson works to capture in his translation, The Message (sometimes succeeding and sometimes miserably failing), Gaus captures with far more consistency and accessibility. Peterson's "updated" language is so "current" as to be dated, while Gaus' language is simple, but never reads as slang. Written in the form of paragraphs, with the numbers removed, Gaus' translation is a reminder that this text was meant to be taken in large chunks more than individual verses, and challenging the reader to dig the way the would into any good book. I read it Matthew to Revelation and discovered a translation that I will most certainly be revisiting and recommending. I would like to see The Unvarnished New Testament made more readily available to the general public. In the meantime, it is worth making the effort to find.

12-25-11

Have decided to leave the rest of January until January. And so, my current list is as follows:

• Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway
• A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving
• The Sense of An Ending by Julian Barnes
• Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin
• Today's New International Version of the Bible

Kester's Best of 2011 (Revised and Expanded Edition)

Earlier today, I posted my Top 10 for 2011, followed by five honorable mentions. Then I promptly remembered two others that were too good to leave out. So. Now. Again. In order:

1. Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan
2. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
3. Galore by Michael Crummey
4. The Sense of An Ending by Julian Barnes
5. Crimes In Southern Indiana by Frank Bill
6. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
7. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
8. The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht
9. Townie by Andre Dubus III
10. Zombie Spaceship Wasteland by Patton Oswalt
11. Chinaberry Sidewalks by Rodney Crowell
12. The Geeks Shall Inherit The Earth by Alexandra Robbins
13. The Pastor by Eugene Peterson
14. The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
15. The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje
16. The End of Everything by Megan Abbott
17. Zone One by Colson Whitehead
18. The Visible Man by Chuck Klosterman
19. Reamde by Neal Stephenson
20. The Informationist by Taylor Stevens

Again, it's worth noting that there are books making a lot of this year's lists that I never got around to reading; Blue Nights and State of Wonder, to name a couple. Habibi, to name a third. And so on. (However, Karen Russell's Swamplandia was one that I read and simply didn't care for.)

Kester's Best of 2011

These are books published in the U.S. in 2011 that were read by me in 2011. If your pick didn't make the list it a) wasn't published in the U.S. in 2011, b) wasn't read by me in 2011, or c) wasn't one of my ten favorite books. Now, in order:

1. Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan
2. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
3. Galore by Michael Crummey
4. The Sense of An Ending by Julian Barnes
5. Crimes In Southern Indiana by Frank Bill
6. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
7. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
8. The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht
9. Townie by Andre Dubus III
10. Zombie Spaceship Wasteland by Patton Oswalt

Honorable mention goes to The End of Everything by Megan Abbott,  The Visible Man by Chuck Klosterman, The Geeks Shall Inherit The Earth by Alexandra Robbins, The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss, Reamde by Neal Stephenson, and Zone One by Colson Whitehead

12-17-11

What Should Kester Read? selections (jumpstart on January)

• The Doll's House by Neil Gaiman

What else is Kester reading? selections

• Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway
• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving
• Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin
• The Unvarnished New Testament translated by Andy Gaus

Suzy, Led Zeppelin, and Me

    Second up in the "jumpstart on January" What Should Kester Read? queue is Martin Millar's Suzy, Led Zeppelin, and Me. Knowing nothing about the book or the author, my going in expectations were as close to neutral as you can get. My feelings coming out were anything but.
    I want to be careful how I word this, because I don't want to seem to damn this book with faint praise. The fact is, I loved this book. As coming of age stories go, this and Blankets are the two best I've read this year. But what's great about this book is that Millar isn't going for anything spectacular; by not attempting to do anything particularly literary, Millar succeeds in doing something really great.
    Too many "classic" fictional memories of adolescence lean heavy on angst and less on heart. You get the sense that any serious tale of high school remembrance requires a main character who might commit suicide or murder his classmates at any second. But most of us don't remember high school that way. We remember feeling strongly about almost everything, particularly music and the opposite sex, but in more of a confused and fuzzy stomached way and less with the angsty and angry. We remember high school the way Millar's narrator does, so that, even though the events take place in Glasgow in 1972, they feel as familiar to me as Chicago in 1993. For me it was Nirvana and not Zeppelin and the girl's name was Kelli and not Suzy, but the story is the same. It's sweet and sad and just a bit (but never overly) sentimental, just the way growing up was. It's lovely, and I loved it, and I think that you will too.

12-15-11

What Should Kester Read? selections (jumpstart on January)

• The Doll's House by Neil Gaiman
• Suzy, Led Zeppelin, and Me by Martin Millar

What else is Kester reading? selections

• Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway
• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving
• Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin
• The Unvarnished New Testament translated by Andy Gaus

Fables Vol. 1: Legends In Exile

    If it seems unfair to judge a comic book series by its initial efforts, that's because it is. Writers and artists are still fleshing out the characters, figuring out the arc, finding out how things work and where things are going. But it's also next to impossible to begin a series anywhere but at the beginning. Which is where Joe started me with my first "jumpstart on January" What Should Kester Read? selection; Fables Vol. I: Legends In Exile by Bill Willingham.
    What I loved about Legends In Exile is what will keep me reading Fables, the premise and the characters. The premise is that the fable and fantasy characters of yore have been exiled to live in our 20th century reality. Those that are able to assimilate and adapt live a sort of undercover existence among us "mudanes," while those that would stand out more (talking pigs and such) live on a secluded farm away from probing eyes. King Cole is the figurehead mayor; his assistant, Snow White, is actually running the show; her ex, Prince Charming, makes trouble among the "mundanes."
    Legends In Exile is mostly about setting up the premise and introducing enough characters to keep us interested, particularly Snow White's hard-boiled detective, Bigby Wolf. Where it loses me is in setting up a mystery for Wolf to solve that isn't that interesting and ends rather stupidly. The entire case feels flimsy, like it's being made up as it goes, and that's because it is. Like I said, Willingham is still figuring out what this is.
    That said, what it could be is brilliant. While I didn't love Legends In Exile, I believe in the Fables enough to keep reading.

12-14-11

Given that I have too long book club books to read for January and the time to read more around the holidays, I've decided (with Joe's permission) to get a jumpstart on Joe's January picks. Given that I'm jumpstarting, I'm also rule-bending a bit and allowing myself to continue with what I'd already been reading. Come January 1st, I'll be allowed only remaining January selections (I'm intentionally saving Little Big and Once and Future King for January), book club books, the Bible, and one book of my choosing for every selection already finished. Clear as mud? Good. As long as it makes sense to me. Here's where we stand as of today:


What Should Kester Read? selections (January come early)

• The Doll's House by Neil Gaiman
• Fables Vol. 1: Legends In Exile by Bill Willingham
• Suzy, Led Zeppelin, and Me by Martin Millar

What else is Kester reading? selections

• Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway
• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving
• Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin
• The Unvarnished New Testament translated by Andy Gaus

Mr. Vertigo

    My fifth and final of Danny's What Should Kester Read? picks is Paul Auster's Mr. Vertigo. Not sure what I was expecting with this book, but this wasn't it. This was better. Much better. Auster's writing is hit and miss with me, but this one is a hit, for sure.
    There are a lot of nice surprises in this book and I don't want to reveal too much. In a way, it's a story about America during the 20th century by being the story of a boy coming of age into a man and then aging into an older man over the span of that same century. As a result, it feels like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Natural and Philip Roth's Zuckerman novels and David James Duncan's The Brothers K. It's magic and it's Hollywood and it's gangsters and it's baseball and it's WWII and it's the Ku Klux Klan. It's the kind of book the Coen brothers should adapt into a film. It's a knowing wink and a sad smile. It's jaunty and joyful and winsome and wild. It's the kind of story that doesn't get told much anymore, because it takes place in a time since the Civil War and before the cellular phone. It's lovely and I loved it and I think that you will too.

12-12-11

What Should Kester Read? selections

• Mr. Vertigo by Paul Auster

What else is Kester reading? selections

• Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway
• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving
• Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin
• The Unvarnished New Testament translated by Andy Gaus

The Stars My Destination

    My fourth book to review in this month's What Should Kester Read? will, undoubtedly, be my favorite. I have yet to finish the fifth and final book (Paul Auster's Mr. Vertigo), but, while I am enjoying it very much, it can't compare to Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination. 

    Gully Foyle is the last remaining survivor of the Nomad, a merchant spaceship attacked in the war between the Inner Planets and Outer Satellites and left adrift in space. He struggles to survive a six month wait for rescue, only to have his distress signal ignored by the spacecraft Vorga. Left to die, Foyle's fight for survival transforms into a mission of vengeance.

    Gully Foyle's story borrows on themes from The Count of Monte Cristo and then expands them into a highly original sci-fi adventure. Many of the tropes that are now common within the genre were first explore by Bester in this book. Not only that, but Bester writes a great sentence as well as he tells a good story. "The old year soured as pestilence poisoned the planets," is just one example. Full of twists and turns and more than a few surprises, this is what good science-fiction aspires to be. This is what good fiction of any genre aspires to be; complex characters, stunning set pieces, and an epic tale brilliantly told.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

    My third book to review in this month's What Should Kester Read? is B. Traven's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.  Interestingly, this is the second book this month to have been adapted into a film that I love. However, while The Neverending Story proved far superior to its film version (though the film will continue to hold a special place in my nostalgic ol' heart), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is no better and no worse than The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Which is to say that the book is an excellent book and the film (I now discover upon reading said book) is an excellent adaptation.
    Three down-and-out gringos meet by chance in a Mexican city and discuss how to overcome their financial distress. They  set out to discover gold in the remote Sierra Madre mountains, riding by train into the hinterlands and then surviving an attack by bandits. Upon discovering the treasure they seek, a mine is dug, gold is extracted, and greed produces paranoia, as one of the men, Dobbs, begins to lose his trust and then his mind, filled with a desire to possess the entire treasure for himself.
    Care to guess whether that's a synopsis of the book or the film? The answer is, of course, yes. John Huston's award for Best Adapted Screenplay was well deserved, right down to the "Badges?!" exchange. But he'd have had no story to adapt without the brilliant B. Traven. This is a classic tale of how the love of money really is the root of evil and why Gordon Gekko was wrong when he said, "greed is good." Read the book. See the film. The order is unimportant. Whichever you get to first will be your favorite, but you're bound to love them both.

12-3-11

What Should Kester Read? selections

• Mr. Vertigo by Paul Auster
• The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
• The Treasure of the Sierra Madre by B. Traven

What else is Kester reading? selections

• Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway
• Light In August by William Faulkner
• Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
• The Unvarnished New Testament translated by Andy Gaus

The Neverending Story

    The Neverending Story is a film that I saw for the first time as a young boy, a story about a boy my age and my type; quiet and shy and timid and scared. A boy who'd like to be strong and courageous, but doesn't see how that would ever happen. And then the boy discovers a book full of adventure and gets so caught up in it as to become a part of it. This was my kind of movie. Even as a grown man, it still is.
    The Neverending Story is the book that the film is based on, though I didn't know the film was based on a book until I began working at BookPeople. I wondered if the book could be as great as the film, but worried that it couldn't possibly and put off reading it as a result. Then Danny assigned it to me and there was no avoiding it.
    Thank goodness. Everything that is great about the movie is even better in the book, which previous experience with book to film adaptations should have convinced me already was so. In both cases the story is about reality, fantasy, escape friendship, imagination, and story itself. And that's enough. But in the case of the novel, that's only half the story. Literally. The book reaches its halfway point at the same place the movie ends. After that, the book goes on to also be about power, free will, individuality, isolation, grief, choice, growth, change, meaning, memory, identity, and love. It is the second half that fleshes out the first and makes the entire story far richer than the film's first half offering.
    Let's be clear, I still love the film. But it simply fails to tell the whole story (or never attempts to, the result is the same) and the whole story, in this case, is brilliant. Where the first half is about the wishes and fantasies of a young boy, the second half is about what happens when those fantasies come true and why young boys (especially timid boys who long to be strong) ought to be careful what they wish for. The second half is coming of age story, it's about how real strength and courage cannot (and should not) come easy, it's about how betting older and bigger doesn't count for much if we don't get wiser as well. It's an amazing tale that I wish I had discovered at a young age and am glad to have discovered now. It is a story that I look forward to reading with my young son.
    Then we'll see if he still likes the movie.

12-1-11

What Should Kester Read? selections

• Mr. Vertigo by Paul Auster
• The Neverending Story by Michael Ende
• The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
• The Treasure of the Sierra Madre by B. Traven

What else is Kester reading? selections

• Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway
• Light In August by William Faulkner
• The Unvarnished New Testament translated by Andy Gaus

Lone Wolf and Cub, Vol. 1

    The myth goes something like this; violence can make the world better. Violence isn't pretty, per se, but it can be heroic, admirable, sexy, and even beautiful. Violence brings order from chaos, fixes what's wrong, puts things to rights. It's the myth that allows us to do violence that we might not otherwise be able to bring ourselves to do. We aren't madmen, after all, we want out violence to have a degree of rightness, of justice. Now, just because something's a myth doesn't necessarily make it a lie, but this one often is. And we know it. But we like violence. So we imbue it with meaning.
    There's a great line in the film Grosse Pointe Blank when John Cusack's character, a professional hitman named Martin Blank, is accused of being a psychopath and responds, "Psychopaths kill for no reason, I kill for money." It's funny because it's the kind of logic that only makes sense to a hitman; most of us in the audience think you'd have to be a psychopath to kill people for money. But what Martin Blank makes us wrestle with is why his work as a military assassin was legitimate while his work as a paid professional somehow isn't. It's good for us to have to think about.
    Koike and Kajima's Lone Wolf and Cub: The Assassin's Road is the story of an assassin and his young son. The title character's mindset is much like Martin Blank's, though he hardly needs money to make his excuse. He kills. Fortunately for him, more unfortunately for his victims, he lives in a time and place that accepts this; father and son cut a bloody swathe through Edo-Period Japan. 
    What's interesting is the way in which the myth of redemptive violence is utterly absent. In general, Lone Wolf's victims are "bad guys," but that's beside the point. Lone Wolf kills. He often uses his son as bait in order to lure his victims in. When this is pointed out as irresponsible, he dismisses this questioning of his parenting skills. A wolf cub is still a wolf, after all. Lone Wolf isn't an angry man, but he is almost always looking for a fight; the way a lawnmower's only happy when it's mowing a lawn. He wouldn't know what else to do. When his son intentionally urinates on a stranger and the stranger demands an apology (a perfectly acceptable demand), Lone Wolf opts for a swordfight instead. Violence makes sense in the world of Lone Wolf and Cub. Violence is what is. They don't need a hero story to make it pretty.
    And that, for me, is why the story works. Or, better said, why the action works; there's very little plot development and it's about as necessary as the plot development in porn. Lone Wolf and Cub is a series of action sequences held together loosely (almost flimsily) by plot. Plot isn't the point. You came to see this guy fight. He's more than happy to oblige.
    Some would argue that the violence in Lone Wolf and Cub is objectionable in a way that, say, the violence in some Clint Eastwood films is not, those who require the myth of redemptive violence. I would tend to argue the opposite. There's something less offensive about the violence of Lone Wolf and Cub; it's more artfully rendered than a Tom and Jerry cartoon, but it's just as pointless. We like to see anvils dropped on heads. We like to see assassins with swords. Better to have this violence in a story so void of morality that we don't mistake violence for something beautiful.
    So, did I enjoy Lone Wolf and Cub? As a story, not really, but that's not the point. As a series of action sequences it works, absolutely; I abhor violence in real life, but I like to watch a samurai swing a sword. And I appreciate the fact that Koike and Kojima don't try to sell me the violence as something good; something to be emulated, celebrated, or admired. My sense is that the authors' intent is to show the absurdity of the violence, by pursuing it relentlessly. There's no point to any of it, it seems almost arbitrary, and so honor and glory don't enter in as much as a need for money and taste for blood. The authors are saying something about violence and it isn't nice. I would be shocked to discover that things take a more heroic turn, unless the character of Lone Wolf experiences an epic transformation. The way the authors are going now, my guess is that this series wraps with Lone Wolf (and, maybe, Cub) coming to a bad end. If there's a message to be had here, it's that violence, for all its appeal, always ends badly.

What Should Kester Read In December?

What Should Kester Read? selections

• Lone Wolf and Cub, Vol. 1 by Kazuo Koike
• Mr. Vertigo by Paul Auster
• The Neverending Story by Michael Ende
• The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
• The Treasure of the Sierra Madre by B. Traven

What else is Kester reading? selections

• Light In August by William Faulkner
• The Unvarnished New Testament translated by Andy Gaus