11/50: The Casual Vacancy

The Casual Vacancy, J.K. Rowling
4/5 stars
This is my 9th book in Rex & Jake's 50-Book Reading Challenge,
which Rex leads 12-11. Full list can be found here.

This is the first non-Harry Potter book I've read of hers, and it was delightful. She created real characters in their own little world, a small town where everything feels bigger than it really is. Or that's the case at times. In some cases, it becomes true to human nature, and that's the worst of anything. At first, I thought it would be a comedy of errors, but it eventually evolves into real people with real problems with each other. Centered around an open seat on the local council, adults and their teenage children have their own issues with each other and they begin to pile up and overlap. It never goes into truly devilish, uncomfortable territory (like Franzen), but it gets under your nerves without cheap bandages. 

10/50: Stardust

Stardust, by Neil Gaiman
4/5 stars
This is my 10th book in Rex & Jake's 50-Book Reading Challenge,

which Rex leads 12-10. Full list can be found here.

This was just delightful. It had the whimsy and fantastical wonder of an old children's tale, but the patience and severity in its prose like a contemporary literary novel. I just wish it had dug deeper into some of the side characters. Keeping it light is what it made this what it was, but I found myself wanting more of an observation of the great darkness in the world created. Regardless though, it was an absolute treat. 

9/50: Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
4/5 stars
This is my 9th book in Rex & Jake's 50-Book Reading Challenge,
which Rex leads 12-9. Full list can be found here.

This book was wonderful, as expected, since, hey, it's Vonnegut.

It's funny, though, as this one was the first Vonnegut book many of my friends read. This was never assigned reading for me in high school, and, my goodness, if it had been, I might've turned out to be an entirely different person. It wouldn't have been because of the themes or even the nature of the narrative. I would've just really embraced Vonnegut at an earlier age. If I had read Vonnegut as a high school student, it might've changed my tactics on debating war, society, and sex. Maybe I would've been more sad and less angry about Iraq. Maybe I would've cut people some slack and not anticipated the world as black and white. Maybe I would've have been so baffled about teenage sexuality.

I read my first Vonnegut book in college, and he didn't click for me as the grandiose philosopher of morality and charm that he's come to be for me until I was a young professional.

To me, Slaughterhouse-Five didn't really figure out where the lagoon of my heart was to swim in, as previous books of his have struck me like lightning coursing through my nerves, as the world unveils itself to me. Don't get me wrong. This is a tremendous book, as it observes tragedy and humanity with the same gusto and beauty as he always has. I just think I maybe had it lurking around my life for so long with so many people talking about it that the revelations of it didn't conquer me the same way. It was, however, an absolutely wonderful take on time travel and the problematic, and sometimes rewarding, nature of indifference.

On the most basic level, Vonnegut understood this country and this world better and harder than anyone. The man was just one correct, rousing, glorious statement after another. He witnessed and wrote, and his casual remarks were spot-on and incredible beyond the stuffy libraries of academics and the wild petri dishes of drugs that belong to modern "philosophers."

To view the world with such humor, humility, and wonder, alongside pointing out the destruction and the horridness is unreal, almost unholy. Vonnegut, in this book and others, presents a voice that would've given God advice and told jokes to the Devil. It's just fascinating to know they teach this book in school. What a way to educate youth.

8/50: Bluebeard

Bluebeard, by Kurt Vonnegut
5/5 stars
This is my 8th book in Rex & Jake's 50-Book Reading Challenge,
which Rex leads 10-8. Full list can be found here.

I've always thought of The Great Gatsby as "The Great American Novel" because it moves and shakes like America. It has the sunsets of dreams in the background, with the hopes and aspirations in the foreground, all meandering like specters among big parties and small conversations.

However, if it were up to me, I'd deem Kurt Vonnegut "The Great American Author" because he's always been able to explain Americans in a profound and understandable lecture while still making jokes. He's sincere and heartbreaking and funny and philosophical all in one paragraph, which is why his books are almost stupefying. They floor me every single time. He's always right. He's right about how America should be. He's right about how people should be. He's right about how everything should be.

And yet he can observe the mistakes, articulate the wrongdoing of mankind, and point out what mattered and why in the great messy history of modern humans. He's what all writers strive to be without any of the ego problems or the stuffy choice of words. He is what people desperately need: a moral compass that is astute and accessible.

There's a sense of beauty and importance to what he says, and he writes like it'll count and make a difference, though it has the humility and silliness of a dinner party comment. He's grateful for what he has and can do, not just for himself, but for humanity, and it shines through in his writing. His words glow when they finally settle somewhere behind your eyes.

Bluebeard is a flawless book. It takes on so much while keeping the narrative short in scope. It never goes astray, as it calmly delivers the scattered breadth of a great artist's life. It gives you the gold along with the gags, and you can't believe how much fun it is, observing the long life of a man who's never existed. It's the fictional autobiography of Rabo Karabekian, now in the sparkling twilight of life, all with his greatest work out in the potato barn that he won't let anyone see. A wild female writer many decades his junior crashes with him and stirs up memories and portraits of reflection come to be his book.

It was goddamn supreme.

7/50: Nobody Move

Nobody Move, by Denis Johnson
3/5 stars
This is my 7th book in Rex & Jake's 50-Book Reading Challenge,
which Rex leads 10-7. Full list can be found here.

I think I was just hoping for a Coen Brothers movie. I mean, I was expecting to laugh out loud one moment and then squirm the next. I was looking for noir at its zaniest, with accidental gunshots and confused anti-hreoes who aren't totally sure why they're doing what they're doing or who they're doing it for. I didn't necessarily get that here. Instead, I got a partially noir story that jived and joked, sure, but never really lit up or glowed. But it also didn't waste my time. It got right into the wild (a bit without the wit though).

Don't get me wrong. It was fun. It just wasn't enough.

I like my noir one of two ways, either dedicated old school or whole-heartedly new wave. One has less humor, but it's got the dedication, as it's playing by the rules. The other is strictly meta, observing the genre while moving its characters along, as it's playing with the rules. This was somewhere between, and I don't think that really works as a formula, if it's going to sneak up my alley. I want Touch Of Evil or Fargo, really. Otherwise, it never reads true, because it's existing as two different things. And that's not genre-bending. That's just blurry, which makes the narrative slightly wonky. Also, I understand that it was going for anarchy and action, but with so few characters, so little direction, and so small of a drive to the plot, there needs to be history (or at least an ending of any kind). Why is anyone doing anything? Who knows? Everybody's just floatin' or jivin' or who-the-fuck-knows-whatin'.

Ah well. I bought the book solely because the cover was a hot pop-art girl in her underwear holding a smoking gun. What'd I expect?

6/50: Barrel Fever

Barrel Fever, by David Sedaris

5/5 stars

This is my 6th book in Rex & Jake's 50-Book Reading Challenge,

which Rex leads 10-6. Full list can be found here.

I had a soft spot for this short story and essay collection from the get-go, as it was one of those rare instances where I thought to myself, "I tried this!"

When I was a teenager realizing that I wanted to write for a living, I wasn't sure what the hell I was trying to do when I finally sat down to do it. I hadn't written much outside of school, and it certainly wasn't enough to make it obvious that writing was a serious interest to myself. I wrote essays, stories, and poems then, but I didn't have a range of good or bad, proper or improper, sensible or senseless.

So, along the way, I'd write these absurd stories of things going wrong for people, and it made me laugh. They were quirky and random. I think the power of being able to play god over your own characters went to my head almost immediately. I recall one story about a delusional high school girl that was obsessed with the popular jock, and one day she really dolled herself up to catch his attention. When he finally turns around, she thinks it's going to be a confession of love, but all he says is, "Stop kicking my chair, you stupid bitch."

To me, I thought it was hilarious. I really did (and I kind of still do). It wasn't based off of anything or anyone. I just liked that the story had an abrupt twist at the end.

Short stories have that power. With a novel, it's hard to keep up the strangeness and a reader will really feel heavily for a character or a plot, so it's a weird tight rope to walk. But a short story offers a reader just enough information and time to understand (and potentially empathize with) characters, so you can really exploit that. Sure, short stories can be a powerful, moving, extraordinary medium...but they can also be for nonsense.

Most of Barrel Fever is made up of funny and absurd yet cynical and realistic first-person accounts of life as one insane thing after another. They're endearing with ridiculous premises (one actor's several-page-long Oscar speech, a mother/wife falling apart in a holiday newsletter, etc). But they're articulate and well-crafted, so the silliness shines through as a glorious fiction. There were parts where I laughed out loud because he delivered a punchline amidst compassionate and peculiar observation.

I've been familiar with Sedaris's essay work for years. He's superb, and I love his non-fiction, as many of them read like short stories anyway. I'm glad that he didn't stray too far, while still steering away, when it came to his fiction. The essays in this collection were outstanding as well, but I figured that'd be the case. Seeing as how this was his first collection, it's pretty interesting to see how goofy he was at the start of his career while also being just as talented and steady as he is now.

Fuck yeah, David Sedaris.

5/10: The Stranger

The Stranger, by Albert Camus

3/5 stars

This is my 5th book in Rex & Jake's 50-Book Reading Challenge,

which Rex leads 10-5. Full list can be found here.

How can anyone love or hate this book? It's like loving or hating shoelaces or that character actor who always plays fathers or politicians. It doesn't make sense. What is there to love? Is it the lack of motivation for anything but playful conversational narrative? What is there to hate? Is it the lack of motivation for anything but playful conversational narrative?

I get it (sort of). This book inspired a Cure song ("Killing An Arab"), and everyone loves The Cure to some degree, but, let's be honest here, that's not enough. A French guy in his twenties bangs his girlfriend and doesn't care, writes a letter to an insane chick for his friend and doesn't care, and puts his mother in a home and doesn't care. He's not a bad guy. He's just a guy. He just exists.

WELL, GOOD FOR HIM. BUT THAT'S NOT ENOUGH FOR SOME OF US, CAMUS, YOU BEGRUDGINGLY QUIET FRENCH EGOTIST.

Some of us like to read about people who do things for reasons (as Vonnegut once paraphrasingly said, "Every character in your story should want something, even if it's a glass of water"). Sure, this was the start of a movement that was more than despondency but not quite nilhilsm, and right on for that, but I need more depth to the past, present, and future of a man being a man. Still, it was well-written as a first-person narrative, so I enjoyed it, but I couldn't point out anything to a hot babe and say, "Yeah, this is what really got me."

Now how am I supposed to discuss the book with babes, Camus?

"Oh, did you enjoy the font?"

"Did you like how the main character was male?"

"What was your favorite long paragraph about him just walking about?"

Fuck you, Camus. You've doomed me and legions of other dudes trying to nail abstract European artist-type babes who just smoke cigarettes and have more desire for good Chinese takeout than commitment.

YOU. DICK.

p.s. I have to admit, it was interesting to be entertained by a book about nothing (think Seinfeld or Bukowski fiction without any sense of humor, just straight up meandering). Also, there actually being consequences to societal indifference is a pretty wild deal when you consider it. I mean, a lack of compassion without malice actually being extraordinarily frowned upon is something to behold. But, still, if some glossy dead-in-the-eyes smokin' hot babe was into this, how am I to connect with her, huh, Camus? By being just as nonchalant as she is in the hypothetical skimpy sundress she's wearing but not giving a flying fuck about? How do American twenty-something layabouts connect with ridiculously attractive poetesses if flirting is too much interest and eye contact might not be enough? TELL ME, YOU GODDAMN FRENCHIE LUNATIC. Sorry, sorry. That was out of line. I'm sure I'll figure it out. I BETTER, OR ELSE. Sorry, sorry. Totally did it again. Ah well. C'est la vie.

HOLY SHIT, THIS ENTIRE BOOK IS "C'EST LA VIE."

Nailed it.

4/50: To Have And Have Not

To Have And Have Not, by Ernest Hemingway
3/5 stars
This is my 4th book in Rex & Jake's 50-Book Reading Challenge,
which Rex leads 10-4. Full list can be found here.

When you consider the writers that got lumped into the standard education process of this country, it's pretty goddamn ludicrous. They were this presentation of non-threatening usual suspects, watered down as archetypes and beaten to death by high school English teachers who wanted to give their students safety. Fitzgerald was a hopeless romantic to an almost dangerous degree, Keruoac was a nomad, Twain had anarchist tendencies, and Hemingway, my unholy god, Hemingway was an unruly MAN (in its most god-like definitions).

Hemingway is the best character non-fiction ever produced. For whatever reason, writers, poets especially, can tend to be pussies. The lot of them go through the experiences, but they consider them pulp, not meals. The meal is the actual writing. Surfers surf because they love it, but if a writer went surfing, it would be so he or she could taste it and then write about it. It's almost exploitation on a personal level. That's not always the case, but I definitely think it's the majority. Hemingway, however, balanced the life and the habit better than everyone else in history, it seems. My brother and I used to debate what man was, a poet or a hunter. Well, Hemingway was both, and not even kind of. He drank recklessly, he hunted big game, he went to bull fights, he wrote poetry, he made fun of other writers, he got into bar brawls, he was an ambulance driver in the Great War, he fished, he fucked, he traveled, he blew his brains out with a shotgun, and he wrote amazing book after amazing book.

This particular book was not amazing, but what it is, especially for its time, is unreal. It's cynical and aggressive even by today's standards. It's one of the craziest books I've ever read. It's a poetic reflection one moment, and then it's wild anarchy the next. It's all over the place. It's not even cinematic in its moments of betrayal or abuse. It's just life as a pointless, rowdy "whatever the fuck ever" existence until the very end, when Hemingway writes page after page of incredible, angelic narration of mankind as a dirty, loud bunch of maniacs just looking to be loved and not be a piece of shit.

It reads like a cocaine conversation, the whole book. It really does. Hemingway was a brute who wrote for brutes as well as academics, maybe even if he was technically only writing for himself. There is tender hope in some of his books. There is a sly chummy laugh in some of his poems. But this book was just straight up "fuck the world" in its most short-tongued and least edited.

The guy will fascinate me forever. I've read about ten of his books, and each one brings out a new side of the guy. He's so complex, but if you pressed him for anything, he'd just shrug and give an answer like, "I like to write," and then take, like, eight shots of whiskey before loading a gun and calling you out for only doing two.

Ah well, to have and have not, I suppose.

3/50: A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens

4/5 stars

This is my 3rd book in Rex & Jake's 50-Book Reading Challenge,
which Rex leads 10-3. Full list can be found here.

I love Christmas. If there are two things in this world that I can't understand how people don't love, it's Christmas and Star Wars. Even if you're not religious, which I'm definitely not, Christmas is such a ludicrously rad holiday season. It's just cheerful songs and balls-out consumerism and everyone's throwing parties and everyone's laughing like stooges and even the lingerie women wear is festive. IT'S ALL GREAT.

So, naturally, an asshole like Scrooge is an unfathomable dickhead in my opinion. But as his brightly spirited nephew points out, it's almost laughable, since he only damages himself. Now, as long as I have been upon this Earth, I have known this story, and I have known a wide variety of adaptions. My personal favorite is the Muppets' rendition because it has Michael Caine and Fozzy Bear, two of my favorite actors. So it's almost surreal to finally read the text with every line that I've heard a time and time again without reading the original source ("Come in and know me better, man!" - "God bless us, every one." - "Show me no more, spirit.") However, imagine my immense surprise when things are there in the original story that I don't readily recall in later versions (Scrooge's sister? The Ghost of Christmas Present has two malnourished children representing Ignorance and Want beneath his great cloak?).

Also, all me friends lied their mouths rotten about the words of Charles Dickens being as cold and dense as cobblestone, they did! Bliiiiiimey, did they eva! There's not an impossible word in there, there ain't. He's somehow the narrator, even though the book be mostly written in the third person, it is. I should say, Mr. Dickens is a laugh and a great giver of the cheer, but, here I am, all these years, expectin' it to be as rough as a hanging by me own neck to get through his passages of yore. Hells bells, he is a master of transformation of man, he is! I was as plum as pudding with what he did, I was. Maybe his otha books are the bricks I was foretold, but, not this one, no sir. This classic novella put me in right good spirits, it did! I might give it anotha go when Christmas rolls its jolly holly head 'round once more!

Seriously though, this book was rad.

2/50: The Time Machine

The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells
4/5 stars
This is my 2nd book in Rex & Jake's 50-Book Reading Challenge,
which Rex leads 10-2. Full list can be found here.

Add time travel to anything, and I'm in. I love time travel. It's my favorite plot device. I like the idea of changing the past and anticipating our future as a collective species. I think it reflects poorly on an individual if they would turn down time travel. Anyone who claims to not "have any interest in time travel" is either a liar or an idiot. What the hell is there not to love about time travel? It can take the dumbest story and make it better, or it can take an awesome story and make it more awesome. It's cut and dry, black and white, obvious and obviouser. Time travel is the most major "duh" of all fiction. It rules. And, if it was available in real life, it would be the absolute coolest (until, of course, it was abused and used for evil, in which case, I might have a different opinion).

The ultimate time travel story is the classic 19th Century novella, The Time Machine, starring, no joke, The Time Traveller. I've seen at least two Hollywood adaptions of this book (1960 and 2002), and the latter one didn't even try to stay close to the story. I barely remember the earlier one, aside from it making we super uncomfortable as a kid who was still fearful of creatures that moved at a speed of 4 miles per hour.

Anyway, this story is just the nameless protagonist recounting his adventure 800,000 years in the future to his colleagues, including the narrator, who does a lazy job of just sitting there just listening to his friend ramble on like a lunatic (who we all know is telling the truth). Basically, that far in the future, the upper class has devolved into a society of childlike people called the Eloi, who wonder at everything and have the integrity and know-how of, alas, children. Below their seemingly perfect playground of a society lurks the mighty, brutal, and equally stupid morlocks, the other half of mankind's split, possibly the lower class. They're essentially dirty non-white yetis, from what I understand. The Time Traveller develops kinship with Weena, one of the Eloi, and does his best to protect her from the morlocks/centuries of horrifying devolution.

The raddest part of the book is that it reads as if it's all possible. Sure, the 19th Century was far along enough to be all like, "Nah, dude. Shit's impossible." But there, basking in the glow of amazing hope of the 1800s, remained a "what if" quality of adventure tales, and this was right up there with the most righteous. It was a time of "he, anything is possible, because we don't have the science or technology to say otherwise. We just have what we know." And any good writer was putting the lunacy in the soft brains of everyone.

So, once again touching upon just how cool time travel is, I'd like to restate that time travel would seriously be the best thing ever. If I were to die tomorrow, my only two regrets would be not having time traveled and not writing Hotel Christmas, what would surely be an instant holiday classic starring Paul Rudd as "Paul Rudd." But, honestly, if I could time travel, why wouldn't I just go back and take credit for Love Actually? Eat it, Nigel Britishguy!

Alright, I looked it up. His name is actually Richard Curtis, and I'm assuming he's quite charming. Time travel!

2012: My Life In Books

For the last few years, I've set myself a goal of taking in 100 stories. This includes books, graphics novels, and audiobooks. I've always fallen short, except for this year. I finally did it, and, hot damn, I still think I need to make reading more of a priority. Anyway, as I've done before, here's my end-of-the-year recap of the best pieces of the written word that I read/listened to in 2012 (with the past and present tense battling each other pretty hard below).

Novels, Short Story Collections
1. House Of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski
The most "book" I've ever read, this heavenly monstrosity went far beyond what I thought was capable of literature. It's the only thing I've ever read that honestly made me think "it's unlike anything else I've ever read." It terrifies me to own it, and I'll always, always, always want to talk about it.

2. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
An epic tale of gods in the modern world, this gorgeous read was violent, weird, wild, crazy, serious, and incredibly done, as it took the madness of fantasy and applied it to real-world darkness, leading up to the young gods of America battling the old realm gods of everywhere else.

3. The Yiddish Policemen's Union, by Michael Chabon
It was Jewish noir, and it was unreal fantastic. I'd kill to be able to write noir like Chabon. Dead junkie in alternate history of Alaska sparks a detective stumbling upon a great conspiracy of politics and religion.

4. The Golden Compass, by Phillip Pullman
Young adult has seen a brilliant evolution in the last decade, and this book may be the best proof. It maturely and patiently took dark religious cynicism and smoothly stirred it together with wide-eyed adventure and exploration.

5. Moonlight Mile, by Dennis Lehane
The follow-up to Gone Baby Gone, it's totally crime fiction, and it's totally the best example of the genre. It stomped the shit out of other mystery tales of by crafting real characters with real problems, real motivations, and real reactions.

6. To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
After a lifetime of hype, this thing followed through with being the most stand-up, firmly articulate observation of southern culture. An immaculate read, it gave the world Atticus Finch, and he's just as amazing of a character as society has built him up to be.

7. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

It's a satirical dystopian masterpiece, and it's written by one of the most energetic typewriter maestros. Every character lives in a tender moment of existence and offering up profound perspectives of literature and life. Also, it's fun as hell, even when it's serious.

8. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, by Jules Verne
I wish the adventure genre was still as mysterious and chilling and bold and wild as it used to be. This was exceptionally written, maddening and thrilling, while also posing as a thoughtful musing on man, nature, and the constant battle and love affair between the two.

9. God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, by Kurt Vonnegut
A quick, delightful read, Vonnegut has the Doctor of Death kill him in each vignette and awakens to engage the most varied characters of history. It's light and silly while offering up some of the best philosophy of the 20th Century, but, then again, what Vonnegut work isn't and doesn't?

10. The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest, by Stieg Larsson
The third installment of the Millennium Trilogy, it solidified the series as one of the most well-written "international sensations." It was strong and heavy while somehow seamlessly moving into the legal thriller genre.

11. The Western Stories of Elmore Leonard, by Elmore Leonard
All of the wild west tales from crime fiction's poet laureate, the short story collection rocked like a runaway train and moved carefully like a cautious outlaw. It had every pulpy move of cowboy classicism without ever doing cheap shots of Americana prairie.

12. B Is For Beer, by Tom Robbins
It's a kids book for adults and an adult book for kids, and it's about the righteous foamy brew. It carries innocent childhood fun as well as it does the straightforward dilemmas of adulthood.

13. Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins
Sort of like The Empire Strikes Back of young adult lit, this was a more in-depth outing of the trilogy (all before everything gets unnecessarily hectic in the third installment). Twas wild, fun excitement.


Graphic Novels
1. Bone, by Jeff Smith
A magnificent piece of the medium that works tremendously well for both kids and adults, it's like Lord Of The Rings meets Three Amigos. It's a solid reworking of medieval fantasy with stellar pacing, and it's funny, goofy, sad, strange, and, above all else, epic. I could've read it forever.

2. Habibi, by Craig Thompson
With gorgeous, immaculate artwork, it became a resounding non-linear story tied directly to the Quran. Beautiful, tragic, haunting and superbly told, the narrative of Muslim characters and culture was old world and majestic, and the epic was richly, wonderfully unraveled.

3. Funny Misshapen Body, by Jeffrey Brown
A sketchy graphic novel memoir, it was like catching up with an old friend who doodles. Nothing crazy, nothing tragic. It's just a nice dude recounting how he got through an average life and into art.

4. Hellboy (#1-12), by Mike Mignola
Outrageously self-aware pulpy horror tales, Hellboy and his crew take on one monster after another, and every creature of darkness hides a sly grin of the apocalypse. So, so, so fun.

5. Sin City (#1-7), by Frank Miller
Always violent, always brutal, always on the verge of a dirty joke, the neo-noir saga is intense and light somehow from start to finish. Pulpy and messy, it's wild and weird through and through.

6. Criminal: The Last Of The Innocent, by Ed Brubaker
It had nostalgia pluck away at the heartstrings without giving up the noir self-indulgence. The real world is gritty and dark, but the main's character's memories of childhood and his adolescence are done up like an Archie comic. It makes everything seems weirder, and it works really well.

7. Anya's Ghost, by Vera Brosgol
Simply done, thoughtfully crafted, it's a high school tale of woe, brimming with ghost story entanglements and swimming with observations of Americanization from an endearing Russian teenage cynic.

8. Ghost World, by Daniel Clowes
Without a real plot, it's mostly just two teenage girls wandering their own world that bores them, so they criticize and imagine. It's overly realistic without trying to be, which makes it all the more honest and beautiful.

9. Blacksad: A Silent Hell, by Juan Díaz Canales 
With rich dialogue and richer animal humanoid characters, it's a dark and straight up cool classic noir with a swirling, almost Disney touch. I just wish the stories were longer.

10. The Man Who Laughs, by Ed Brubaker
The best incarnation of The Joker is the one that loves being crazy and admits that there's no alternative. It's why he's one of the best all-time villains: precision mixed with chaos. Poor Batman, with the most exhausting bad guy around.


Non-fiction, Plays, Poetry
1. Bossypants, by Tina Fey
Honestly, it's probably the funniest book I've ever read. It's funny almost line by line, and she doesn't fall back on memoir cliches or lose steam like a humorist. She chooses select moments in her life to utilize as chapters, and it's goddamn hilarious.

2. Pawnee: The Greatest Town In America, by Leslie Knope
It's pretty difficult to write a television companion book that doesn't suck, and this collection from the writers of Parks And Recreation posing as every single character, major or minor, was brilliantly done. It added a rich history to a fictional town that's silly and somehow believable.

3. No More Poems About The Moon, by Michael Roberts
I like the world within his poetry. It's everyday nonsense mixed with anything-is-possible-but-not-precious consideration. Butterflies in the kitchen, palm trees in the living room, hope in every heart.

4. My Life, by Bill Clinton
The start to finish life reflection of a charming goof, the memoir is so damn conversational, you almost expect him to use your name in the middle of the text. It's traditional, but so fun and engaging.

5. The Year Of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion
In one year, Didion loses her husband and daughter, and the memoir documents the tiny details of grief while offering up a life meditation rarely seen so articulately done.

6. Churchill, by Paul Thompson
Winston Churchill was a lunatic, and it's impossible for anyone not to be fascinated by him. Teddy Roosevelt though Churchill was a brute, and Churchill thought Gandhi was an asshole. This biography, and probably every other Churchill biography, is amazing because it has history's best character.

7. Homegrown Democrat, by Garrison Keillor
One long, all-over-the-place musing on politics and growing up, Keillor recounts life in Minnesota and why it matters to be in the liberal crowd of America. It's whimsical and sly, even when it borders on preachy.

8. A Coney Island Of The Mind, by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Purchased solely because of the name, the collection of titleless poems bounced around, all colorful and chiming. Twas the noises and images of an America you'd hope to find in a jazz club, read by a drinking buddy romantic with a lust for life.

9. The Importance Of Being Ernest, by Oscar Wilde
A play of and on the trivial, it's Victorian Era meets vaudeville, tripping over itself with boundless wit and goofy grace. It has every madcap farce cliche before they were cliches, mixing mistaken identities with societal scandals.

10. The Audacity Of Hope, by Barack Obama
Almost terrifyingly articulate, Obama observes his American life versus the American life in a slow, engaging musing posing as a memoir. It reads superbly clean.

Special Mention: Reread

On The Road, by Jack Keruoac
Not only does the book hold up, it's an entirely different story as an adult reader. I only recalled the wild hooligan fun and it being about adventure. But it's a tragic saga of men who can't give up their youth and freedom, and it's more about escape and desperation. The idea of "it" isn't cool, poetic gibberish. It's recognizing the failure of maturity.

1/50: The Lost Symbol

The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown

2/5 stars

This is my 1st book in Rex & Jake's 50-Book Reading Challenge,
which Rex leads 7-1. Full list can be found here.

Fuck you, Dan Brown. Fuck the dimpled smug shit-eating grin that drapes your soft New England skin every time you think you've just shoved what you think is a twist inside an already capable story. I just want you to get to the sawing a lady in half trick and you keep pulling quarters out of my ears and gasping surprise as if I should be letting you put your fingers in my mouth while I struggle to announce, "My god, have you seen this wizard inside my face? He's amaaaaaaaaaazing!"

Dude, I may have been down for the thrills with The Da Vinci Code (Jesus bloodline?!) and Angels & Demons (the return of the Illuminati?!), but I need more than a pyramid being rumored about local feds and conspiracy theorists to get my literary boner at full sail. Do you know why those books worked and this one didn't in the end? Because you didn't write The Hours or Revolutionary Road or some other honorable human drama that made me feel like killing myself because the weight of existence is too much. NO. You wrote a thriller, which means the payoff better be goddamn supreme. I should throw this fucking book across the room because, holy shit, that's what this entire genre that you've been exploding on for years now is based upon almost solely and entirely. I should be visiting a doctor to see if I'll ever feel anything again or maybe Dan Brown finally ravaged my nerves once and for all with his unbelievable action plots and curious revelations and wild twists and unforeseen turns and oh my fucking god whatever else is necessary to be a modern-day thrill writer who doesn't want to be stomped out by the critics who can very easily rip you to shreds.

You're supposed to be a firework show with a grand finale, not some hot mysterious babe who kisses your ear a few sensual times and promises you sex that sounds like it's for demigods and sadists but then bails early because, whoops, she forgot it was her brother's birthday at Red Lobster.

"Oh shit, everything's happening," I said at the beginning of this book when, lo and behold, a mad man had done something mad and Robert Langdon, everyone's favorite tweed-wearing yokel swimmer symbolist, was called to the nation's capitol to save everything. Hey, I have a question. WHY THE FUCK DOES HE NEVER BELIEVE ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE? He had to fight the entire Catholic church in his first adventure, save the entire Catholic church in his second, but, oh bloody dicks, he can't possibly imagine that the Freemasons could build a fucking pyramid.

"How could that clown possibly make a puppy dog out of balloons? It's so unfathomable," your central character probably mumbles to himself but loud enough for everyone at the children's party to hear. Oh, what's that, Robert Langdon has an opinion? Grand, grand! Tell us what's so impossible now, you charming but cynical yet somehow optimist elitist schmuck.

"No, that's ridiculous," Mr. Langdon cheerfully/dickishly scoffs at a constant, wishing he could somehow make yet another Harvard-Yale rivalry joke to impress babes that aren't there and wouldn't care anyway. Robert Langdon is like Indiana Jones with erectile dysfunction and we're all just supposed to pretend this guy is popular with every person ever. No, dude. That's not how it works. The ending of this book was literary erectile dysfunction, and you're prancing around like you just got the entire book world pregnant.

Meanwhile, the first and second acts of this book were tremendous. Hell yes, I said to the book on several occasions. What's that, a hidden passage? What's this, a secret order? Well, that's great, because I love everything about that shit. "Not so fast," Dan Brown tells me around the time my adventure through Washington, D.C.'s hall of secrets should be wrapping up, before quietly adding, "I'd prefer it if I just sucker-punched you and left you wanting."

Thanks, Dan Brown. Thanks for giving me hope that Robert Langdon could yet again reveal some insane ancient mystery that should blow me away so hard that I land in the adjacent room weeping with teenage joy and spinning with senior citizens delusions, unable to talk about anything else with my barber that barely speaks English except for knowing the high tales of your adventures. Instead, I have to be reminded that I read a Dan Brown book. Thanks for giving my heart and soul blue balls, you literary equivalent of college grad dry-humping. Ugh. GOOD DAY, SIR.