Friday, December 29, 2006

latest books, part 2

an evening of long goodbyes
-paul murray

the narrator of this book is charmingly hapless, a young british twenty-something trying to live like an aristocrat. breezy read mostly, throws around a few stereotypes and then paints in some of the characters in more subtle style.

no country for old men
-cormac mccarthy

for some reason, this is easy to get ahold of while 'blood meridian' has dozens of holds on it. something about the other book finishing tied for third in nytimes poll best fiction of the past 25 years. anyway, this book is disturbing; you'll figure that out pretty quickly. having read two thirds of the border trilogy, i figured it was worth wading through the blood to figure out what else was going on. i don't think this book is trying to teach us a lesson in the usual sense. mccarthy doesn't have an answer for us, it's more of a warning or a lament. the book is an adventure that takes the tragedy of its subject matter seriously.

about a boy
-nick hornby

i have put this off for a long time, because i enjoyed the movie so much that i knew i'd like the book. i've never enjoyed comparing a movie to a book this much. i love the fact that the dialogue is exactly the same in one crucial scene, but the movie takes a different turn by changing the meaning behind the words. part of the enjoyment also came from reading it in a british accent. would have been harder without having seen the film version.

awol: the unexcused absence of america's upper classes from military service - and how it hurts our country
-kathy roth-douquet and frank schaeffer

not quite done because i would have finished it on the way to work and had nothing to read on the way home. i was going into this believing the authors had a good point to make. that's probably why i finished it, because this is one of the worst books i've read all year. it's fairly self-righteous, talks about racism yet offhandedly ridicules the idea of a hiphop class being offered at stanford, and seems to have a healthy degree of animosity toward stanford, the ivy league, and america's wealthiest citizens. there are some touching stories and letters from soldiers and their families, but the overall book is hard to take. i suppose it's the extremely smug authorial attitude; they bash their peers in order to score points with their audience. this is not a book you'd write if you wanted to reason with, say, a left-wing hollywood exec who doesn't want military recruiters talking to her son. it's something you'd write if you wanted to score points with people who already despise the rich. i think it's sad; there's a good point here - the country would be better off if a few more kids left duke to serve in the military for a few years before becoming lawyers and running for office. however, the arrogance of this book's tone might undermine the authors' effort to convince those kids to serve.

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