Filed under: Reading
It’s been a while since I last posted a reading list. This one I’m really excited about because the books came highly recommended from the staff at Book Passage and Green Apple Books. There’s also two titles from Powell’s Indispensible Book Club, plus one pick I found while surfing Borders dot com.
- The Halfway House by Guillermo Rosales – a novella that I’m currently reading in chunks because the scenes are quite vivid and intense.
- Alive in Necropolis by Doug Durst – San Francisco’s current One City One Book selection with a story based in Colma, CA.
- The Tenant by Roland Topor – something about the premise of this book reminded me of Kafka’s The Trial, one of my favorite novels.
- A Good and Happy Child by Justin Evans – the cashier at Book Passage told me to brace myself before diving into this one. I’m intrigued.
- City of Thieves by David Benioff – saw this title sitting on three different staff pick tables at three different book shops, so naturally I went for it.
- Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen – read a couple passages while browsing at Green Apple and got sold on it.
- Into the Beutiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea – if it’s anything like The Hummingbird’s Daughter, then I’ll be a happy reader.
- How to Paint a Dead Man by Sarah Hall – got it in the mail from Powell’s and I trust their judgment completely.
- Johannes Cabal the Necromancer by Jonathan L. Howard – just in time for Halloween.
Eventually I’ll write a review about one or two of these books. Until then, it’s back to reading for me!
Filed under: Reading
I was going to title this entry “She Didn’t Believe Me But Yes, As I Told The Cashier Earlier Today, I In Fact Have Not Yet Read Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows (Having Saved My 2007 First Edition Copy For Collector’s Sake)” but I wasn’t quite sure if the post editor would accept such a lengthy title. And besides, the boy wizard isn’t the only thing I wanted to write about tonight.
Anyway, in anticipation of the latest HP film, I am marathoning the Potter books again. In between them I’ve inserted a short Poe tale. The juxtaposition reminds me of midday travel from the Mission to Inner Richmond. That fogbank, it’s like the clouds of Mordor once you’re under it.
I found a new favorite blog, The Green Apple Core. I started reading it after one of the cashiers cracked a joke about their youtube promo video for City of Thieves, the book I had brought up to the register to purchase. I’m still trying to find that video on their blog. Meanwhile I’ve come across a lot of great book recommendations. That’s what I’ve always liked about Green Apple Books – they sure know how to pick ‘em.
Summer reads for July include Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, Justin Evans’ A Good and Happy Child, plus A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick and, when it arrives in the post, Bowl of Cherries by Millard Kaufman. Perhaps I’ll throw in some non-fiction. I have my eye on Tony Horwitz’s A Voyage Long And Strange: On the Trail of Vikings, Conquistadors, Lost Colonists, and Other Adventurers in Early America. I’ll read any book with a title that long.
I sneak photos inside City Lights Books when I can. Afterwards, I’ll purchase their books in appreciation for their letting me photograph like crazy inside their store. I buy the ones they publish because it’s a good way to discover new authors and poets or rediscover older famous ones. I like the upstairs Poetry Room because it is secluded and angular and I don’t know 2/3 of the poets whose books fill wall to wall shelves in the room but who cares. I like the cool photo postcards they sell of Beat poets too. Mostly, I like the table and chair near the window that’s always open no matter what temperature it is outside. Sounds of North Beach fuse and collide with sounds of Chinatown, bounce along the murals in Kerouac Alley before winding up inside the upstairs Poetry Room. Freakin’ inspiring.
Last weekend, amidst car horns, dapper couples, tenants arguing about laundry in Mandarin and the college football radio broadcast, I took advantage of being the first one upstairs and propped my camera on a stool near the 50th Anniversary On The Road table display to shot this picture you see here. Okay, so I’m going for the artistically backlit look here. It seemed fit for the mood. Afterwards I browsed around for a while before selecting an anthology of e.e.cummings poems and the children’s novel King Matt the First by Janusz Korczak before heading out.
I have armloads of books to read for this coming Winter. Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje, Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold, The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud, The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia, Matt Haig’s Dead Father’s Club, and my newest crack: short story collections. Among these are
Raymond Carver Where I’m Calling From
Ellen Klages Portable Childhoods
Kelly Link Magic For Beginners
ZZ Packer Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
Yiyun Li A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
Mark Jude Poirier Naked Pueblo
Haruki Murakami The Elephant Vanishes
Aimee Bender Willful Creatures
The Complete Short Stories of Truman Capote and
Karen Russell’s St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
Obviously, I select from just about everywhere.
Coming up next month is the 8th annual S.F. Litquake festival. Loads of local authors and poets will be there. Both the known and (relatively) unknown. It’s gonna be a blast. This year’s festival will carry more meaning for me since this is the first time in seven years that I’ve taken a major leave of absence from writing to pursue other activities. Every now and again, like my last entry here, I’ll find something to write about. But for the most part it’s been locked up and set aside. I’m in a study mode right now and Litquake will fill that need quite nicely. Plus, I’m so stoked to learn that one of the new guys at work does spoken word – something I’ve never tried but always admired. It’ll be fun to watch him perform when he finishes his latest cd.
That loud bang you’ve just heard was my brain exploding.
I make a reading list just about every month and add to it every now and then with recommendations from friends, book reviews, and browsing finds. But I’m too far behind on books and I haven’t even begun to talk about catching up on my Reading Journal.
Call me a Serial Reader. A slow-paced devotee who will not under any circumstance “multitask” when it comes to the reading of literature. I’ve done enough of that at university, which was the last time my brain exploded from textual overload. There was even a heat to it – a general warmth throughout my cranium accompanied by mild buzzing in my ears. Not a pleasant feeling at all.
I recently checked up on my current reading list and discovered that I was at least 27 books behind. I lay part of the blame on my overly ambitious schedule and another part on improperly choosing certain titles in sequence. Heavy novel followed by another heavy novel, instead of the more appropriate comic novella or short story collection to balance things out. So I went over the list again earlier today and adjusted the sequence. It should work. It better. The final Harry Potter book already has a title (The Deathly Hollows) and I’ve yet to crack open The Half Blood Prince. But before I do that I have to re-read the entire series because it’s been three years since The Order of the Phoenix came out and I’ve forgotten the gist of nearly every thing that has gone on (I refuse to use the “quick and dirty” solution of watching the films)
You get the idea.
Other books in which I’m dreadfully behind the times include The Life of Pi, Middlesex, The Historian, Memoirs of a Geisha – yes yes I have not read any of these yet – and The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain BlueBear. I’ve yet to even secure a copy of BlueBear, but I do have a copy of Moers’ previous book, A Wild Ride Into The Night. Thankfully it’s a novella that I should be able to tackle in a day. I am a slow reader. By choice.
So I’m off to indulge in my Norrellian bliss and hide away this coming week behind a pile of books in my not so Norrellian bedroom. It helped a bit to catch a cold a couple days ago. The confinement resulted in considerable reading gains. I should have a book review or two posted up by the end of the month. Reading takes priority. Quite obviously.
Coraline by Neil Gaiman is a kid’s book, meaning that its intensity level will not rise to that of Neverwhere or the Sandman series. But that doesn’t mean that loyal Gaiman fans (like myself) should ever pass on it. So why did it take me years to finally pick up this book and read it? Well, for one thing I was taken by American Gods and Anansi Boys, choosing to read those first then venture off to try some other authors and their new works. And then there was Eliot Perlman’s Seven Types of Ambiguity, which I’ll discuss momentarily. A book like that requires some debriefing. So after finishing that psych thriller I pulled my copy of Coraline from the queue and read it. In an afternoon. And it was good.
All the elements of a twisted take on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland cum fantasy genre fiction are there: the proverbial doorway to an alternate universe, the evil substitute parents, the challenge, the horrifying tasks to be completed, the unlikely ally in the form of an animal with anthropomorphic tendencies, etc. Nothing novel about this formula, correct? But it’s Gaiman’s prose, his grasp of sketching the ordinary and contrasting it sharply with the other-wordly that makes this kid-novella work. Plus, like Carroll’s signature piece, there’s a strong female protagonist whose stubborn stout-heartedness is both admirable and likeable. Refreshing to see how a young girl could overcome adversity through bravery, utility, and quick thinking. Better than Cinderella … and without the “woe is me!” attitude.
So, that’s one book I tackled in the past two weeks. And on to Perlman’s Seven Types of Ambiguity. This was a well written book, an intense and deeply emotional, highly academic mindfuck that ran on many levels. Of the many rampant themes, karma and interdependence were the forerunners. Perlman tells the story of a child abduction through a series of selfishly toned and rather untrustworthy first person narratives. The narrators, characters in this complex storyline, move back and forth through time, dropping subtle hints and clues that run hither and thither but all roads lead to the heart of one very selfish and twisted protagonist – Simon Haywood.
Perlman is an Australian barrister and when reading his novel you get the sense that you are not just reading true confessions but also a semblance of trial testimony. Picture each narrator on the witness stand, telling his or her account to judge and jury, pleading for their own selfish needs, and you’ve got the gist of Perlman’s storytelling technique. Ingeniously clever, for this novel does not completely take place in a courtroom setting. It jumps time like a happy flea on several dogs’ necks. I enjoyed reading it, despite the tendencies of each narrator to lapse into an overly academic tone (such is the trouble with barrister-turned-author types). Of course, not every narrator in the story had a high level of education, so why did they lapse into academia? Other than that, a well made book.
Finally, I took my sweet time with a darkly comedic novel by Thomas King entitled Green Grass, Running Water. Talk about ingenius storytelling! The plot was ridiculously simple and ridiculously straightforward, but the presentation was brilliantly … ingenius. King hooked me in with very likeable characters described mainly by their actions instead of their thoughts (a sharp contrast from Perlman and other thought-driven authors). Then there’s the added spice of a narrators continually firing away at the telling and re-telling of a story that never seems to be done correctly but heck, the point being that these things can’t ever really be done correctly anyway. The Lone Ranger, Robinson Crusoe, Ishmael, and Hawkeye giving their renditions like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John of the New Testament telling the same story from the most subtlely “different” angles (and with some new stuff added in). Brilliant.
I do enjoy these novels that can tell a story on many different levels without the befuddling mental clutter or the seemingly “high” prose style aimed to insult the average reader. I’m not an average reader by a longshot, but I still prefer prose that captures and enthralls over prose that … that blathers. King’s novel definitely does not blather. It does its job, though, reeling you in with equal parts fantasy, funnies, and drama. Till you realize that you’re not just reading it to find out what happens to Lionel or to Dr. Hovaugh’s hunt for nonagenarian-plus escapees. Till you realize you’re reading a social satire and culture clash piece. Till you realize that it’s being told to you in the form of Grimm Fairy Tales meets the Gospel According To [Insert Author Here].
Brilliant.
