don't even move an inch

sense and sensibility
-jane austen

i'd read it before, but this time through i got more of the subtleties of it. i would enjoy studying some of the historical context of this book just to see exactly how snarky jane austen is; there are moments that i, the relatively uninformed reader, don't know whether she's trying for irony or not. i may not end up following through on this, but i can see doing some research to enrich my reading experience.

deal with it

under the net
-iris murdoch

an irresponsible writer wanders his way through london and an assortment of ridiculous situations. reckless, suspicious, and lazy about most important elements of his life, the protagonist is self-centered and scheming but remains endearing. having read 'the sea the sea,' i was amused by the fact that both novels are built around the misadventures of wordy, egotistical, male narrators. i like jake from 'under the net' a lot better, and it's interesting to note that the narrative excess that burdens the first several chapters of 'the sea the sea' is never a problem here. murdoch's dry humor and fascinating characters make this a thoroughly enjoyable read. it is in print, but this is not a book you can walk into a chain bookstore and pick up, unless you're lucky. i struck out three times before tracking a copy down with the help of the internets.

fear nothing

my revolutions
-hari kunzru

this has to have been one of those books i grabbed because i liked the cover. yes, i have not given up on that habit. they're easy to show off; people with good taste will just think you have stylish books, and people who are into books probably still won't have read them.

this was one of the more suspenseful books i've read, and it did a great job of revealing both the past and the present gruadually, which helped heighten the anticipation. the stories that unfold are: a sixties activist's journey into radicalism, and his struggles in the present to face his hidden past. it's set in britain, and a few landmark events are historical, while most are probably not.

these are not from the backlog

...the're just short

the pat hobby stories
-f. scott fitzgerald

an amusing collection of material he wrote close to the end of his life, these stories are brief, sometimes effortless episodes from the 49th year of a whiskey-soaked hollywood writer's life. fitzgerald doesn't dazzle here; he's just out to amuse us, but in doing so he presents a hollywood that is tangibly real.

not everyone gets a shot, seriously

the cult of the amateur
-andrew keen

andrew keen has to be the world's biggest fan of knol, and if he's not, he's even more of an idiot than he lets on. he actually talks about a similar-sounding site that started up 2 years ago. not having heard of it, i'm assuming it hasn't done well. keen may just be a nostalgic fool, relentlessly attacking the participatory internet, but he has a few points that are worthwhile. the problem is, his main point is that too much participation is bad. stop making music, posting videos, or writing online; if you're good enough and try hard enough you can do it professionally. then andrew keen will give you a shot. this is actually what he says, straight up. he's afraid the record labels will disappear, no one will have the million dollars (yes, literally) and year's worth of time necessary to make a decent pop record, and he won't be able to find anything good because there will be too much lousy music out there. he relies on exaggeration, assumptions, and hyperbolic rhetoric to further his arguments. it's probably not worth reading the whole book unless you're like me and you feel forced at times to investigate viewpoints you immediately hate. what keen seems unwilling to accept is that technological progress brings change. this book is the yin to michael lewis' yang in 'next,' but lewis is the better writer. it's hard to read someone so bitter - he hates craigslist because it's free, youtube because it's not limited to professionals, and online music stores because they sell songs for too little. he talks wistfully of the days when a giant record chain provided deep selection and knowledgeable staff. all i remember about that place was high prices. you start feeling a bit sorry for him when you realize that he liked the world a certain way and just wishes it wouldn't change. he fears that iconic newspapers will continue to decline, somehow assuming nothing will take their place. he whines that cherished reviewers will, someday soon, have no well-paid platform from which to guide us to the most worthy culture and media. he only acknowledges that new media platforms still give rise to hits and influential figures when he's using that fact to reinforce one of his complains such as his assertion that bloggers, even popular ones, don't make appreciable money.

keen's best point is essentially borrowed from mattathias schwartz, and at least partially quoted and cited. it is that online poker poses a definite threat with is intensely addictive action. keen leads this section with the same shocker schwartz begins his article with, and does not cite schwartz for the story itself. citing and quoting schwartz on other elements of the poker story is fine; this is how books are written. the problem is, keen doesn't want web content to be recontextualized and repurposed. he rants about tagging and remixing content, when that is essentially what he does with schwartz' article, using its most effective and relevant elements to add to his own text. this is one more example of keen's shortsightedness; having railed extensively against the internet's application of a concept that's generally accepted offline, he actually employs the same concept for his own purposes. how he used schwartz' article is at least mostly ok; his hypocrisy is not.

i think one of the worst things keen does is to call illegal downloading and legal paid-for downloading of music the same thing. both threaten the music industry's status quo, and keen likes cultural institutions to endure unchanged. somehow, he never seems to consider the positive consequences of things he dislikes. if the barriers to producing music, for example, are lowered, there may eventually be so much music out there that no one will finance a million dollar recording effort. to keen, that's a problem; the million dollar estimate is from a musician he admires, and he wants that man to be able to go on the way he always has. he doesn't want future talents of the same magnitude to miss out on their chance to make a million dollar record. it might comfort andrew keen to know that that record doesn't have to cost a million dollars if technology has radically democratized production of music. even more importantly, that democratization means more talented people will have a chance to make something great and share it. keen argues the opposite is true, and i think it's a shame he can't see that history argues against him.

strictly speaking, it must be a novella

corruption
-tahar ben jelloun

translated from french, this morrocan novel is remarkably short. the protagonist is one honest man trying to stand for his principles in a society where everyone seems to be taking or handing out dirty money. he struggles with a lousy marriage that's not completely his fault, but this is primarily a tale of inner turmoil. i didn't think it was great, but the main character's philosophizing didn't work for me the way it probably should have. its told in terse prose, and manages to avoid the monotony that i find in many tales related by introspective first person narrators.

development

some days there's pie
-catherine landis

a story about a small town girl who runs away, first from home, then from the man she left with, this is a book of characters and relationships. it's a journey that mostly takes place in one place; a chance connection between two women that grows into a deep friendship. in a way, it seems closer to real life than many novels, because it's hard to form an opinion of people until you hear the narrator share hers. the narrator has a peculiar refusal to contract the phrase "did not," which, given her background, seems odd. maybe i just missed the secret explanation for that.

a little more

crossing california
-adam langer

i read a brief review of this book and it disappointed me. i don't really review books, and i probably don't do a good job of explaining them, but i do recommend books, and you should read this one. spanning the transition between 70s and 80s, carter and reagan, it introduces us to several mostly jewish chicago teens and their parents. there's a trick of narrative overlap where one character will experience something and we soon bump up against the same event from a different point of view. i started wanting to become friends with these people, which says something about me and about langer's ability to write. he's good at it, and i like clever people. the best thing is that all the characters are flawed, and many of them are appealing for different reasons. i think generally if you know most people well enough you'll like them; langer has made sure i like his characters by giving me enough insight into the soul of several of them that i can excuse their shortcomings. 'half of a yellow sun' was good for the same reason; in that novel, most of the main characters had done something fairly awful, yet they retained their appeal.

a partial accounting

the last summer of the world
-emily mitchell

i read this because it involves wwi, a subject i'm curious about lately. this is the other book with the photographs, which appear as captions only before we hear a story that fleshes out what happened before the picture was taken. the protagonist, edward steichen, is a historical figure, and an imperfect one. the author does a decent job of making her characters flawed without making me hate them.


half of a yellow sun
-chimamanda ngozi adichie

set in Nigeria in the 1960s and dealing with the civil war with Biafra, the book seemed daunting because of its size and subject matter. the characters were fascinating and convincing. i expected a lot more blood, and while i'm glad there wasn't too much to read through, the horrors of the war affect everything in the landscape of this novel. it follows the lives of a select group of privileged Biafrans, who are brought lower and lower as the war progresses, but who are never personally dragged as deep into the terrors of warfare as many of their countrymen. their education, money, and social class allow them to escape or ameliorate certain elements of the wartime suffering, but their own suffering remains frightening.

not any more

next
-michael lewis

there's one reason i read this book: i like lewis' writing. someone on the subway asked me if it was any good, and i had a laugh with him about the fact that it's not really 'next' any more since the book was published 7 years ago. this was a good book to read in my spare time, although it was only worth it really for the writing. he didn't show off too much, so that element wasn't as good as it could have been either. there are some good stories here, but let me go ahead and recommend an article by lewis that you should read first. it's about his return to new orleans following hurricane katrina. it is well worth your time.

snapshots are the new thing?

'the rain after it falls'
-jonathan coe

i finished reading the jacket copy after finishing the book. perhaps this is book, so overtly pitched to women, went over my head. this is my second book in recent months, following emily mitchell's 'the last summer of the world,' which i'm still reading, that uses photographs to frame the narrative. the device is more overt here. i found it annoying. when i realized the book was going to be a series of descriptions of photographs, it was dread that overtook me, nothing else. basically, a family learns the secret life of a deceased aunt and the identity of her lost heir through a series of recordings she has left behind. i thought the "listening" characters were weak, and that much of the material they heard was boring. it could all be a matter of preference. there are some nice touches, but i was really just trying to get through this most of the time i spent reading it. that being said, it was not a true chore to read.

good reads

the thirteenth tale
-dianne setterfield

this was a book club selection, and i enjoyed it a lot. for some reason i want to categorize it with the harry potter books, perhaps because it was a thoroughly enjoyable read and one without a lot of pretense. it's not really a kids' book even, and the subject matter is rather different and decidedly non-magical. if there is something particular to be learned from this book, i don't know what that might be. i have no problem with that.

it was a farce?

the corrections
-jonathan franzen

i'm still not denying that jonathan franzen is a good writer, i just hope i don't read him again. this book was supposed to be a lot funnier than i found it. i guess married couples being horrible to each other just isn't that funny to me. i have to say, don't read this book unless you want to feel awful.

i will be a little cruel

sorry people, it's late and i'm in a critical mood.

the power and the glory
-graham greene
my least favorite part of this book was the opening scene. i suppose that's good. i loved reading this because it wasn't trashy. so much modern literature drags us through the muck because it's supposed to be good for us. here instead is the story of a nearly fallen priest on the run from socialists in mexico.


the twenty-seventh city
-jonathan frantzen
an indian woman takes over st. louis in 1986. why st. louis? she and frantzen may have chosen the city for the same reason...anyway, the communist undertones are lost on me; i was never afraid of the communists growing up. i'm going to assume that frantzen is older than me, otherwise he might have had to try harder to figure out how to make the tension of the communist angle work...i'm totally giving him the benefit of the doubt that it does so for an older audience. by the end of the book, i hated both her and the man she's trying to undermine in her power grab. i enoyed reading this book. there were parts i found myself skipping or wishing i'd been able to skip because they were corrupting my innocent mind, but maybe the problem is that i'm reading too many male authors. i think that even nice guys are tempted to think the rest of the male population is more superficial than they are, so that they need to make sure to objectify women. so many brands in this book are made up, though clearly based on reality, that i have to wonder if the brands that survive in the narrative are actually financing frantzen's new house or something. i think i've heard that paid product placement happens in litereature. that's ok, every other type of media does it.

stranger's gate
-tom casey
i found something in the prose of the first 20 pages of this book to be so awful that i laughed out loud. i have a hard time giving casey credit for writing a story about a macho pilot. when you are a macho pilot, it doesn't take much to do that. his protagonist's understanding of romance seems to be of junior high-level maturity, and i can't say that there's any proof the author is any different. the saddest part is, there's a fair amount of relationship stuff in here; our red-meat protagonist actually spends a lot of time reflecting on relationship issues. what we seem to get is a character who thinks he understands a lot about women and the challenges of making things work emotionally and romantically, and that character is written by an author who doesn't understand these things. so tom, you capture some good piloting drama at times, but your author friends think a lot more highly of you than i do, so i assume this won't hurt much. seriously though, this book seems pretty awful. anyone up for the challenge of proving me wrong?

gone a bit stale

the sea, the sea
-iris murdoch

a few pages into this book, i was loving it. a few more have passed, and i'm growing tired of the narrator. this extroardinarily first-person tale has, thus far, been a charmingly idiosyncratic description of the protagonist's new home and surroundings. the joke is getting a bit old, and i'm ready for some characters other than the sea and the man who lives by it.

you're just a twit

headlong
-michael frayn

this book fooled me at least twice into thinking it was something it wasn't. what it is, besides a foolish romp through the english countryside and dutch art history, is a bit boring. martin clay believes he has happened upon a lost treasure of european art, and he struggles to prove this to himself as he dives into the history of the painting he thinks he has discovered. along the way, he must outwit the country gentleman who owns the painting as he seeks to acquire it for a fraction of its true value.

while reading this book, i was also meditating on the question i asked previously about authorial skill and narrative voice. when writing from the first person, how does an author transcend the limits of this chosen narrator? introspection is one tool that provides some ability to comment on the scenes that unfold through one person's eyes, but not all characters would be as self-aware as the distractable professor who stumbles his way through this particular plot. for less literate heroes, the author must find ways to use words cleverly and yet avoid puncturing the image of this fictional world as it's related to us by the narrator. this means details and descriptions must be concise yet revealing, character flaws must fit the archetype the protagonist embodies, and every word has to come across as limited by the chosen narrator rather than the author's skill. headlong, of course, avoids this dilemma, but it does seem to spend too little time revealing the nature of secondary characters. the greatest weakness of this book, though, is the tedious length of martin's research sessions. perhaps we never find out much about anyone besides himself because the book is about a man who becomes increasingly self-absorbed as he pursues his dream at a pace that leaves everything else in his life behind. i felt like the other characters were interesting, however, and i wish i'd gotten to spend more time with them. the fact that i feel closer to them than martin ever does perhaps proves frayn's skill in relating more than martin ever tells us, or simply proves that being human is to reach out to those around us, even when they're fictional.

first impressions, or: i want to get in a boat, just not this one

last time i visited the library, i told myself not to feel obligated to read everything i was checking out; there just wasn't enough time to properly evaluate each title before heading out. here's how things looked 15 or 30 pages in.

all for love
-dan jacobson

all for love reads like a brilliant syntesis of a story your history teacher told in class and the salty side notes your pervert know-it-all buddy added under his breath. the subtle narrative glee that comes each time a hint of something is fleshed out into tabloidable anecdote is enough to prevent me from continuing.

the twenty-seventh city
-jonathan franzen

i was reading this while a very bizzarre man harangued a crowd that i wished i wasn't a part of. not that i had anything against the crowd, just the bizzarre man. somehow the book seemed to be messing with my head as surely as he was trying to do, and the funny part was i still figured i'd read the whole thing. this fictionalized tale of st. louis in 1984 starts out oddly enough, immediately shoving its world into a surreal parallel world that the author seems happy to insist is nothing unusual.

because there's nothing better to do

my roommate and i sat around and read last night. i was happy that we were doing this, rather than something completely worthless. then i lost my willpower and turned on the tv. i watched a relatively inane movie and stayed up too late. i did, however, get a huge start on a fascinating and disturbing short story collection.

dear mr. president
-gabe hudson

i can't really say why i picked this off the shelf, especially because the design of the spine is pretty ugly. it's got a decent cover, some interesting quotes on the back from people who seem like they deserve some respect, and even a quote on the front. that can be a bit of a cause for pause, but i decided after reading two sentences of the first story that i would like this collection, and i did. it's disturbing, amusing, and has some great characters, most of whom are changed for the worse by war. it was little surprise to read that hudson himself had fought, but he also has an mfa and won some fancy award while getting it. further proof that good writing is about making your world come to life for others. hudson's specific use of familiar brands at critical points in some of the stories adds realism as it reminds that the protagonist's tortured life could exist within the reader's own world. at times, the backstories of the warriors in these tales seem odd, and their romantic interests seem cliched. there's no denying that hudson's a good writer though. i haven't figured out what an author is supposed to do to transcend the flaws of a narrating character. if there is something, hudson doesn't fully have a grip on it yet, but he's as likely as most to figure it out.

the obligatory reading update

tender is the night
-f. scott fitzgerald

fitzgerald may have taught me a few things about perspective. as the tale begins, i hate dick diver passionately. i can't get over his unfaithful heart. by shifting the narrative to diver's point of view, however, fitzgerald gets me into a more sympathetic mood and i struggle to maintain my dislike for dr. diver. his slow descent inspires empathy but allows me to despise him again. by the end, i am glad nicole turns against him, amused at the plot's unexpected intersection with a legendary sporting event, and genuinely happy that the divers didn't mend back into one like the buchanans.

six minutes to freedom
-kurt muse

i read books about the military because i think i might actually join. it's a long shot, but a long shot that i take seriously. i can't turn down a good war story, and the removal of noriega was a war i knew little about. i just remember something about the americans surrounding him and playing loud rock music to annoy him. muse is an american citizen jailed for his role in an underground radio station broadcasting denunciations of the panamanian ruler. his story is interesting, has some issues with narrative voice, and has a happy ending. the story is worth it, but there are moments when i find myself thinking 'the character who seems to be telling the story right now wouldn't talk like this.'

cross-x
-joe miller

the kansas city schools stink, but there's a storied debate program at one of the worst, and miller is telling that story. i didn't know anything about high school debate before, and here i found a reasonable introduction to this world as well as the world of central high school in the aforementioned city. the unfortunate thing about this book is i began to think of myself as somewhat similar to these kids - i'm feeling a bit lost and it's probably because i'm not particularly happy with the obvious path ahead of me. i feel like my attitude is a bit self-indulgent. the book, however, gets personal for miller as he grows intensely loyal to the central debaters and finds his eyes open and opinions shifting through the course of his time with them. the last page of the book is probably my favorite ending of a work of nonfiction.

class 11
-t.j. waters

government-approved tale of a post-9/11 spy's training experience. a bit macho, but in a lovable way. interesting subject matter that is related carefully; there's a good mixture of background and plot. waters gets a bit personal and self-righteous at times, like miller, but the good thing about this is that he cares. it's a pretty gung-ho book, but people who spy for our government should be enthusiastic about it.

reluctant

i excitedly determined to read 'tender is the night' a week or so ago. i'd read an excerpt in a fitzgerald collection, but i'm still recovering from a teenage conviction that gatsby was the only of his novels worth reading. i'd read that somewhere, i guess. as i set in, the novel was fresh, though some memory of having turned those initial pages remained. then, somewhere in the process, i almost completely lost desire to read it. my fear is that i've read so much nonfiction lately that i can't take a good tale any more. the problem with nonfiction is, a lot of the stuff i've read isn't all that amazing, and perhaps that's given me an overly skeptical attitude. i'd say there are some vexing tendencies in fitzgerald's writing at times, and 'tender is the night' seems full of them. fortunately, as i have continued, the story draws me in every time i get past the more tedious parts.

unrelatedly, i am discovering today that, as i expected, i really shouldn't listen to the old 97s all that much unless i'm seeing them live. i think i've gotten so used to hearing the music live that recordings just aren't enough. maybe it's just the wrong music to listen to at work, especially when people are interrupting you every 5 minutes.