Category: Books

I’m almost certain I read this book of essays for its title alone. I don’t remember the cover at all, but maybe I was sheepishly hiding it on the bus while I read it.

One thing I’ve learned about this little project of mine is how very very little I seem to remember from most of the books I’ve read. I recall emotional tone, some scattered details, and occasionally a plot summary. It’s sad really. Or maybe not. Were I still the kind of person who lies awake at night thinking thoughts like: Where are all these words going that I’m shoving into my cranium? I’d probably think thoughts like that. (If I had an editor making editorial notes, it would read: Just wait, just wait. –Ed.) Good thing I can think them in the harsh, soul-crushing light of my computer monitor instead!

So, I don’t remember the contents of this book, but I do remember reading it on the bus, and in the lunchroom at work. I remember laughing out loud. (I do this while reading sometimes. A bit awkward on public transit. I mean, I’m a little weirded out when someone laughs out loud to themself* on the bus…) I remember it being a bunch of essays about the silliness of “celebrity” and whatever that means. Mostly, after the amusement, I felt a sense of relief that my life doesn’t relate in any way whatever minor errors in judgment some celebrities somewhere might happen to be making in sight or sound of ten million eyes and ears.

I should really see if she’s written anything else…She has! Go go gadget browser!

*intentional!

Ah, Tintin. He and his little white dog (and Captain Haddock and Thompson and Thomson and Professor Calculus…) were my first real taste of comics, and after that first taste, I was hooked.

Tintin also represented a jump in sophistication in the types of books I was reading. Up to that point, I had been reading books about talking animals, fairy tales, and those books that straddle the uneasy line between full-blown picture books and more text-heavy stuff. TINTIN AND THE CIGARS OF THE PHARAOH cannonballed into that sweet and gentle (and dull) pond.

What a rush! I remember trying to figure out how to read it: what order the speech bubbles went, whether Tintin could hear Snowy talk, and trying to figure out if Thompson and Thomson were twins or not and whether to pronounce the P, and if so, how?

I remember reading Tintin to my youngest sister on the couch, and trying to decide what type of voice Snowy should have (high and squeaky). I was so excited about it, I had to share. I don’t remember if she asked me to read it to her or not, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I approached her to do so.

As for TINTIN AND THE PICAROS, I mostly just remember the cover. Something about Tintin getting involved in some hijinks in South America somewhere. As there were at least one or two other books set in South America, they do blend together quite a bit. My memory of comics has always been spotty, but I suspect that PICAROS was less memorable for other reasons. It’s no EXPLORERS ON THE MOON, that’s for sure!

I’ve tried to read some Tintin to my own children, but nothing doing. I expect it’s something they’ll have to discover on their own. I’ve never responded well when people have tried to tell me what to read, either.

I don’t think I had ever even heard of David Mamet before I read OLEANNA (and SPEED-THE-PLOW) in college. I thought it was pretty amazing stuff at the time, and for a long time after, too. His dialogue has this staccato, snappiness to it that’s mesmerizing.

OLEANNA is the story of a professor who gets a little too chummy with a student, who then goes on to accuse him of sexual harassment (or worse? I can’t remember). I’m not sure what I’d think of the play now, but at the time, as a freshman or sophomore in college, reading (and reading aloud scenes from) a play about such serious topics felt, in a way, like finally leaving childhood behind. It had a kind of elicit quality to it.

We watched the movie too, which I remember being impressed by, encountering William H. Macy for the first time.

As for myself, I’ve always felt stymied by Mamet’s dialogue, even as I’m impressed by it. The stops and starts and repetitions all flurry around and elude my understanding of them. It’s a stark, cerebral kind of dialogue, that some actors just fill up with emotion-juice. (See, for example, Alec Baldwin in GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS) As for me, I’ve always felt left out in the cold, even as I stared in, marveling at the dance of language. A Mametian match girl staring in the Christmas window. If you will.

Okay, I admit it, I’m a binge reader. I’m a sucker for authors with vast catalogs of books to their name. Orson Scott Card, whatever you may think about his personal opinions (failings?), certainly is no slouch in the book-writing department.

After my friend Lion handed me ENDER’S GAME, and after my Uncle Brian loaned me a copy of (I think) UNACCOMPANIED SONATAS, I was hooked. I read every Orson Scott Card book I could get my hands on, and thanks to my local public library, that meant pretty much all of them.

THE MEMORY OF EARTH has the somewhat odd distinction of being nearly the last book by Card that I read. (I succumbed to temptation when ENDER’S SHADOW came out, and, most recently, reread ENDER’S GAME for a book club.) It’s strange to have a falling out with an author, especially when it’s over their writing. (This was long before I became aware of Card’s unfortunate personal and political opinions. I marvel at how someone who writes with such sympathy and empathy for human pain and suffering could be so cold and callous toward others in his public life. I’m not going to get into it more here, and there are others who’ve written much more thoughtfully about this issue than I feel able to do.) I think it’s pretty impossible to read Card’s books without coming to the conclusion that he can’t stop writing about messianic figures. His deeply misunderstood protagonists are always saving the world in some fashion or other.

Not so much with THE MEMORY OF EARTH, though. This book is a barely veiled science fictional retelling of the beginnings of the Mormon religion. Which, I suppose I’m fine with, but I just started feeling weird when the characters start marrying multiple women… assuming I’m remembering this correctly.

Up to that point, I think I’d had basically two encounters with Mormonism, neither of them directly. The first were the vicious Mormons as described by Jefferson Hope’s tale in the Sherlock Holmes story “A Study in Scarlet.” Let’s just say it doesn’t paint 19th century Mormons in a very flattering light.

The second, also indirectly, came about from all my time in evangelical churches, which, let’s just say, are not the biggest fans of Mormonism.

So, I stopped reading Card’s books. In fact, I remember standing in the library with THE CALL OF EARTH (book 2) in my hand, and setting it down again. Maybe it had to do with the Mormon thing. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I’d read probably twenty of his books up to that point, and had just gotten tired of his writing style. Maybe I was tired of reading about misunderstood messiahs. It’s tough to say, at this point, why I stopped reading his books back then. I’ll always be grateful for the tens (hundreds?) of hours of enjoyment I got out of reading his books, but…

Now… I just can’t bring myself to open up another one.

For a while there, it seemed like Warren Ellis was putting out new comic books faster than I could read them. I mean, sure, there were already a bunch out before I discovered him, but for a while there he seemed like the Wolverine of comic book writers, just popping up everywhere. He seems to have slowed down quite a bit since. He’s moved into novels, and his comic output seems to have dwindled away. That’s fine though, since his novels are quite enjoyable too.

TRANSMETROPOLITAN is a bizarro dystopian future tale about a Hunter S. Thompsonesque-style journalist. In spite of its grim tone, this series has a shiny idealistic core. This is a story that believes in the power of words (and terrible terrible non-lethal weapons, i.e., the poop gun) to effect change.

Like all of the other comic book series I read, I only remember the broad strokes. I don’t actually remember what happened in this specific book. I mean, from the subtitle, I’m guessing… some disease and… a cure? I’m sure there was some wacky, grotesque humor, and some barely concealed political satire, as well as really just delightful dialogue.

I had a blast reading these TRANSMETROPOLITAN books. I haven’t read them in 10+ years though, so I’d be curious about how they hold up. I wonder if I would find them so gleefully gruesomely delightful. Oh, probably. Who am I kidding?

Still, this series is perfect for the outwardly disaffected (but secretly idealistic) “young adult”.

Kid Loki! If you’re not sold right there, then I suppose I’ll have to write some more about this book. He’s the mischievous trickster everyone loves to hate!

Thor has a serious hero problem. He’s a pretty dull guy. (Unless he’s getting mad at the Hulk or Iron Man. All of those early Avengers had serious anger management issues.) He’s mellowed a lot since those early days with the Avengers. Unfortunately, he’s kind of a square, even with his long, golden locks, and his giant mystical hammer. Fortunately, he’s got Loki. Even in the original Norse mythologies, Loki’s trickster role was crucial for livening up those old sagas. (The Trickster Motto: ‘Making oral history fun for millennia!’) Every hero should be so fortunate as to have such an interesting arch-nemesis/sometime ally. Unlike Batman’s Joker, who’s steeped (especially recently) in a somewhat off-putting chaotic destructive nihilism, Loki and Thor have all this family history and sibling rivalry to fall back on.

Anyway, this brings us to Kieron Gillen’s comic, which is not unlike any other superhero comic you’ve ever read, because it isn’t actually a superhero comic. It’s more like a Norse saga in comic book form. I don’t understand the back story at all, but somehow adult Loki died, and then came back as Kid Loki, and everyone’s willing to give him a chance, because he’s a kid, and Thor vouches for him. Even so, no one especially trusts him much.

Loki goes on this secret epic quest, and lots of fun stuff happens. I’d really recommend this one.

If you’re not into the superhero stuff, Kieron Gillen wrote a pretty excellent non-superhero comic about magic and music called PHONOGRAM.

I remember very little about this specific book, mostly because I’ve read several of Eric Powell’s comic, and they do tend to blur together a bit. THE GOON is bewildering, because it’s utterly grotesque, but in a way that I find vaguely charming. Perhaps it’s the humor, or the wordy playfulness–I mean, “Death’s Greedy Comeuppance” is so so lovely/funny.

The titular Goon is a terrifying thug with a heart-of-gold (or perhaps a heart wrapped in gold foil), who’s always getting into some scrape or another. There’s circus-stuff, strange magic, zombies of some kind or another, and hideous monsters, as well as The Goon’s runty, wise-cracking sidekick. Thank goodness for wise-cracking sidekicks, because The Goon’s not exactly oozing charm and wit, apart from the lethal variety, that is.

The art in this comic has a gritty harshness to it, with the characters themselves being more on the cartoonish side of things. There’s just a strange (and entirely deliberate, I’m guessing) juxtaposition of tone at nearly every level. With all the weird goofiness, there’s also some real heart-breaking stuff. I have to give it to Eric Powell. He’s created a comic that lets him explore pretty much the full range of human experience. Don’t let the surface fool you. Like The Goon, THE GOON has a lot more going on than it seems at first.

Also, though I’m usually a stickler for reading things in order, you can jump in pretty much wherever you like with THE GOON and be ok.

This was the last book added to my books spreadsheet. I read this one to Max about a month ago. It’s a strange one, but Max was into it. The art seems vaguely reminiscent of Paul Pope, though cleaner and less ugly.

This book has a lot going on. A somewhat evil magical woman/necromancer, zombies, a giant bear thing, a terrifying cat beast, honey, swords, flashbacks, a very localized apocalypse.

This princess goes wandering off into the wilderness to prove herself in an attempt to convince another long lost tribe to join with hers. She arrives, only to find that this other tribe has been destroyed, with only one young man and a not-very-old woman remaining. Stuff happens, and the source of the destruction is revealed. The author does a nice job of steering away from a simplistic good and evil stance, while exploring the messiness and damage that history and family set, almost as traps, for younger generations. Ignorance of that past history, either though denial or loss, can leave the young baffled and bewildered as they struggle to make sense of the world.

Pretty complicated themes for a kid’s book, and it didn’t pull any punches, but Max stayed right with it, asking insightful questions the whole way. I watch him grappling with the world, and his place in it, and I think how confusing it must be, this whole wide world of ours, with all its weird, wonderful, terrible messiness. I can only hope that I’m clearing the fog away a little.

I’ve read so many of Pratchett’s books, that they’re bound to come up. Still, I hadn’t expected my little patchwork random book-chooser to spit out another one so quickly. I own about four of Pratchett’s books, and this is one of them.

(Sidenote: Alice was obsessed with this book for about a week, and carried it everywhere. This was when she was about three, I think. She came up with her own title for it, something about vampires taking baths, and carried it with her everywhere she went in the house. When I told her what the title of the book was, she told me I was wrong. I think she liked how shiny the “bathtub” is on the cover.)

If I recall correctly, which I probably don’t, Death tires of being death, and decides to go on the road… as a musician? …as a handyman? and leaves his work to his adopted daughter. Meanwhile, in Ankh-Morpork, rock and roll is discovered! Then lots of stuff happens, Death continues to speak in all capital letters, and I come to realize that the plot of Pratchett’s books isn’t so important, compared to his execution of them.

Pratchett writes silly, silly, deeply serious books. This guy ponders pretty much the entirety of human existence through his comedic, fantasy novels. There are those who might move on by Terry Pratchett’s novels–though not many, because he’s sold millions and millions of books (I looked it up: 85 million+) all over the world–because of their fantastical content, and those people are sadly missing out.

Go read a Pratchett novel. It won’t take long, and it almost doesn’t matter which one.

I’m not gonna lie, Steven Erikson’s MALAZAN BOOK OF THE FALLEN series is a tough, tough sell. The first book, GARDENS OF THE MOON, is kind of a hot mess, even though it pushed all the right buttons for me. I know this because I’ve placed copies of GARDENS OF THE MOON into several people’s hands, and not one of those people has ever finished reading it. Oops!

It’s a shame really, because the Malazan series is something special. A mammoth–ten volumes! with each volume pushing toward 1000 pages!–fantasy series that spans not just thousands, but millions of years. In retrospect, DEADHOUSE GATES, the second book in the series, is probably the best place to start. The story is much more focused, and events in this book are so significant that nearly every book following deals with its repercussions in some way.

One of the primary characters in this book is an historian, but whose kind and considerate thoughtfulness impressed me, these being traits not often present in epic smash ’em, bash ’em stories like this one. Not a wizard, or a warrior, or an assassin, but a scholar who spends his time in the book bestowing small kindnesses on those around him. Shocking, I know.

I started reading this series in my second year in graduate school, and it was a welcome distraction from my schoolwork. In spite of my hesitation at starting an (at the time) unfinished, multi-volume fantasy series, there was something about the title of that first book that intrigued me. GARDENS OF THE MOON seemed like a such a strange title for a fantasy novel.

To be sure, this series (or this book) doesn’t pull any punches. “Book of the Fallen” is a pretty big clue to how grim and sad these books tend to get. That being said, I spent a lot of time with these books, and I’m very glad that I did so.