It's April and You Know What that Means...

A 2011 books read recap!  Am I ridiculously behind? Yes. Is this something I have have time to dwell on? Nope.  So without further ado or explanation I'm going to jump into my top ten favorite books read last year.  In no particular order:

"Survivor" by Chuck Palahnuik

Funny, insightful, horribly crass: this book won my heart for it's shear strangeness and over the top nature.  After having recently read "Fight Club" and really disliking it I wonder if this novel was really as great as I remember but I'm going to go with my gut and say yes.  If you're looking for a weird, interesting, easy read go no further.

"Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley

A classic in both science fiction and the broader world of literature, a lot can be taken from Huxley's dystopian vision.  For those who haven't seen it yet, this comic does a nice job relating this book to our current world.  Social messages aside it's an engaging, well written novel that will leave you thinking.

"Light Boxes" by Shane Jones

Rarely do you encounter a novel that is simultaneously as unambitious in scope and as engagingly written as this slim volume.  It's a pretty straightforward allegory for Seasonal Affective Disorder that due to Jones' mastery of language becomes a beautiful little treat even if you've never heard of SAD before (I read it in March cowering inside trying to escape the 90 degree heat.)

"One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

"One Hundred Years of Solitude" is a sprawling masterpiece filled with enough magic to make you feel like a child again even as you read through Marquez's complex and entangling sentences.  The cast of characters, both strong and weak, spiteful and noble, genius and ignorant, are some of the best to ever appear in fiction.  I could go on praising it for quite awhile so I'm going to cut myself off and say if you have any interest in literature this is a must read.

"White Noise" by Don DeLillo

Darkly funny social satire, when done right, is probably my favorite type of writing so it's no wonder I liked this book so much.  Of the four DeLillo books I've read this is definitely the best.  It's cynical, humorous, often a bit ridiculous, and definitely not for everyone, but those who'll enjoy it at all will really love it.

"Point Omega" by Don DeLillo

Drastically different than "White Noise" it's often hard to tell this is written by the same person. "Point Omega" is more than a little pretentious but the core part of the novel, set in the desert and full of musings on the nature of time, had more of an effect of me than 99 percent of the books I read.  Its magic is not something I can really explain but I was completely lost within its scant 100 some pages.

"Ficciones" by Jorge Luis Borges

Borges will bend your mind.  His prose (or at least the translation) leaves something to be desired but his ideas more than make up for any shortcomings.  His philosophical ideas masquerading as short stories are easily the most interesting pieces I read all year.

"Eating the Dinosaur" by Chuck Klosterman

I like pop culture and I like to pretend it's important.  I even like to think that maybe it holds some universal truths.  Klosterman seems to be in the same boat.  His essays are interesting quick reads that embrace the trivial while at the same time never shy away from the big picture.

"By Night in Chile" by Roberto Bolano

Bolano is a master of prose and that shines through even in this translation.  I'm sure a lot of this eerie, morally ambiguous story went over my head but it was nonetheless powerful.  I plan to read more Bolano this year so maybe I'll have some better insights soon.  Regardless, this was a great first taste.

"Autobiography of Red" by Anne Carson

It's a poem, it's a novel, it's fantastic.  Carson has a way with words that drives this unconventional "novel in verse" from mythology to homosexuality to Latin America to volcanoes. There's a lot of disparate pieces that come together both beautifully and seamlessly in this vastly under-appreciated book.

*Insert Interesting Headline* or Recap Part 1

            So it’s been about a month since I last posted. Miss me? Oh you didn’t notice. Yeah that’s what I figured.  Anyway the last month has been crazy though have been able to do some reading so instead of spending the next few weeks trying to catch up on full length write ups I’ll just patch together a brief overview.

“Pnin” by Vladimir Nabokov

Nabokov is better known for his controversial novel “Lolita” which I’ve yet to read.  My Dad gave me “Pnin” because he remembered reading and enjoying it some 30+ years ago and though it took me awhile to get through I’m inclined to agree with him.  The novel, about an inept Russian professor, is equal parts funny and heartbreaking.  Though the writing can be a bit dense at times ultimately it’s what really made this book shine.

“33 1/3: Pavement’s Wowee Zowee” by Bryan Charles

About two months ago I wrote a review professing my love for Bryan Charles’s novel “Grab on to Me Tightly as if I Knew the Way.”  “Wowee Zowee” is Charles’s foray into the world on nonfiction.  The book chronicles the making of the album “Wowee Zowee” by Pavement, one of the leading alt-rock band in the 90s.  Prior to reading Charles’s novel (which I first came across about a year ago) I had never heard of Pavement but being interested in reading another one of Charles’s books I decided to try their music which I ended up really enjoying.  For those who haven’t heard of them here’s one of their songs:

As for the book, I found it interesting but not nearly as engaging as his novel.  Charles used a very different writing style, which though more informative did not have the same poetic tilt to it.  This type of style was far more suited to a nonfiction work but a part of me couldn’t help being disappointed.  Some fascinating interviews with the band members and others associated with the making of the album make the book worthwhile for any Pavement fan though some prior knowledge about the band is necessary to get through this slim volume.

Later…

So I wrote those last few paragraphs in September (?) and set it aside hoping to add another book or two to the list before I posted it.  Considering it’s now Thanksgiving I’m going to go ahead and say procrastination got the better of me.  Despite my absence I have still been reading though, granted not quite at the same rate as this summer.

“City Life” by Donald Barthelme

I feel pretentious even admitting I read this so I’ll just be completely honest and say that not only did I read this short story collection by the postmodernist writer Barthelme, but I greatly enjoyed it.  Some of the stories definitely went over my head, most notably “Blood Bubbles” (though I think the incomprehensible nature of it was part of the point), but I found some of his more accessible stories to be fascinating.  Barthelme makes use of unconventional story structure and often includes multiple pictures in his pieces.  It is all very surreal and imaginative but if you’re in a mood for some substance free mind altering I highly recommend this collection or any of Barthelme’s stories for that matter.  Highlights include: “Views of my Father Weeping,” “The Glass Mountain,” “Sentence,” and “City Life.”

“Self Help” by Lorrie Moore

I’ve recently discovered that short stories work a lot better with a busy schedule than full fledged novels (why it took me so long I don’t know) so I’ve been picking up more short story collections lately.  Moore’s “Self Help” was one of these collections.  I read and enjoyed (mostly) her novel “Who Will Run the Frog Hospital” this summer but I kept hearing how short stories were really her best medium.  After reading this book I’m inclined to agree.  She writes about rather mundane situations but the elegance and emotional power she harnesses while covering these subjects is remarkable.  I, and lately even more than usual, enjoy reading things that are fantastic or unique.  Moore’s stories are neither, but I still found her stories to be engrossing.  I would recommend the best stories of the collection but in truth I loved almost every single one of them.

“Mao II” by Don DeLillo

I read my first DeLillo book this spring and since then I’ve been a fan.  “Mao II” is my fourth DeLillo book and maybe it’s a case of too much of one author in too little time but I was rather disappointed by this novel.  It’s about an aging reclusive author (read: Don DeLillo’s depiction of himself) and his handful of “friends.”  There are quite a few meditations on crowds, fame, terror, and death.  It’s supposed to be one of his best books but I found it to be painfully slow and I felt no connection with any of the characters who were, to put it in middle school vocabulary, weird and annoying.  Perhaps I wasn’t in the right mood but I think I’ll take a break from DeLillo for a few months.

To be continued…

All was well

            I just finished reading “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” again and while normally I would sit down and write a review of it, for a book like this I just can’t.  Even if I could ignore all my nostalgia for the book and concentrate on it’s quality it would be pointless since either you’ve enjoyed the Harry Potter series enough to read the final installment or you’re a naysayer who never made it past book two.  Instead, here is my humble attempt at a tribute.

            I am a Harry Potter fan.  There are very few readers my age who aren’t.  Though the Harry Potter series has been touted as children’s books that were able to break free from their target audience and appeal to a wide range of ages, it can’t be denied there is also a very generational aspect to their popularity.  Though I’m far from the biggest fan (as my conspicuously Harry Potter paraphernalia free room can attest to) I grew up with Harry, Hermione, Hogwarts, and everything else in the series.

            To the best of my memory I was first exposed to the series when the first and second books were given to me as a gift during the Christmas of 1999.  Next to a super awesome metal slinky one of my friends gave me for my seventeenth birthday, they're the best gifts I’ve ever received.  The books were beyond my reading level at the time, so I sat down with my family while my dad read them out loud.  It was a tradition we would keep all the way until the last one was released in 2007.

            From the start I absolutely loved them.  At the risk of sounding like a hipster, I’ll admit that this was before they had been commercialized and there was no merchandise for them to be found, so with special paper, a printer and an iron, I made my own shirt emblazoned with the cover of “The Chamber of Secrets.”  I wore it with pride.

            I remember going to the book releases.  One came out on the morning before a road trip, another one released while I was sitting in a Peruvian airport and I bought the sixth one while in Canada so now it looks shrunken and out of place, squeezed between the massive American editions. 

            As for the movies, though never quite as enchanting as the books, were still thrilling parts of my childhood.  That’s why, as I laughed with my friends last Thursday night while waiting for the clock to hit 12, I couldn’t help feeling a bit of sorrow, because I knew a prolonged episode in my life was ending.  Feel free to call that notion ridiculous.  Feel free to scoff at my attachment to a fictional world.  But when it comes down to it, the magic of the Harry Potter series isn’t in its spells or potions but in the knowledge that however horribly wrong things in real life go there is always a world I can close my eyes and return to that feels like home.

            For me, mischief will never truly be managed and for that, I’m glad.