Look at the Birdie by Kurt Vonnegut

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Date: October 20, 2009

Just like every other Vonnegut enthusiast out there, I was a little wary when two years after his death, it was announced that Look at the Birdie, a collection of  14 unpublished short stories would be published. I really didn’t want this book to suck.

So I was lucky that this book was classic Vonnegut. Most of the stories were written in his younger days as a writer and it shows. There seemed to me to be more Player Piano-type writing in this collection than any other of his books. I’ve said this before on here and I’ll say it again, there is no other writer that makes me feel simultaneously utterly ashamed, but also very proud of being a human. These stories follow familiar Vonnegut paths - good can conquer evil, and seemingly zany tales can spin into deeply profound lessons in a heartbeat.

Unfortunately this book is also a reminder that Vonnegut is no longer with us. Selfishly, I think of the few times I will reach out for a book of his that I have not read before. This number is dwindling into the low single digits now, but I am certainly glad this book was published and any fan of his would be wise to pick this up someday.

Under the Dome by Stephen King

Publisher: Scribner

Date: November 10, 2009

I couldn’t believe this book was as long as it was. 1073 pages. King is a master. I think he must juggle 40-50 characters in this story and pulls it off. The story never slows down.

I guess the premise is one King played with back in the 70’s but couldn’t get right. An invisible, semi-permeable dome drops down over a small town in Maine called Chester’s Mill. Most people on the inside try to come to grips with the situation, while others make the most of the situation to become as absolutely terrible as a human being can be. You get the picture, chaos - a lot of really bad situations getting worse and worse.

As King said, he wanted to write a book that never took its foot off the pedal, and it doesn’t. Reads more like a 300 page book than 1000+. An enjoyable read in the same way The Bachelor Pad is an enjoyable show. Turn off your mind and enjoy the hi-jinx. What a great storyteller.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Publisher: Knopf

Date: 2005

I loved this book. Death is the narrator. The main character is an orphan in Nazi Germany. Her best friend is a kid who says and does everything I wish I could have when I was 11. He is brave to the point of being foolish, but hilarious and fiercely loyal.

Of course, there is a huge dose of sadness and heartache in this book to go along with the wonderful characters and humor. Having read The Painted Bird a month or so ago, I saw the horrors of a child navigating Nazi Germany as an orphan. This story, unlike The Painted Bird, shows us a different side of childhood, where beautiful things can happen in everyday life, even amidst the chaos.

Any more info and I’d start spoiling things. So make the time for this one, it is probably the quickest 550 page book you’ll ever read, and well worth it.

Rabbit Redux by John Updike

Publisher: Knopf

Date: 1971

I can see now why Updike has recieved so much praise for his Rabbit Series of books. Rabbit Run was a fantastic, heartwrenching book about a man who was acting out of his time. Rabbit Angstrom was a young, 26 year old father, making serious mistakes that would carry consequences for the rest of his life.

Redux is a continuation of that first book, only it is set 10 years later in the hedonistic late 60’s. Rabbit is a bit older. So are his wife and son. The amazing thing Updike has done with this book is that he has made it an almost seamless progression from the first.

Earlier today, I dropped off the copy of Redux I had borrowed from Casey. We had read Rabbit Run together last year for our book club, The Bloomsbury Two. The first thing he asked me as I handed it back to him was, “So, is it better than the first one?” I answered, “Yes…well…I think so, maybe.” The point being, I am not sure which is better. They are both equally fantastic. Updike has created a character in Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom that is one of the most amazing I’ve ever read. Love him or hate him, we truly, truly know him. Outwardly, he is a man entirely made up of middle class cliches. He has a decent job. He has a house in a sub-division. He is married with a family. He is a former high school sports star, etc. Any way, he portrays all of these things that would lead us to believe he is an ordinary Joe, but he is so much more and different than the obvious. 

I was worried that I might open up a can of worms and have to dig straight into the rest of the Rabbit Angstrom’s life. Looks like I am heading that way and can’t wait.

Patrimony by Philip Roth

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Date: 1991

I read Roth’s Everyman earlier this year which was my first Roth experience. I loved that book. It is a retrospective of a man’s life after his death - his lusts, his regrets, etc. This book touches on some similar issues, but is much different as it is nonfiction.

Patrimony tells the story of Roth’s father Herman in his final year of life and Philip’s role as his caretaker. Roth does a wonderful job of pulling out the threads of their complicated relationship for us to see. As both a son and a father this book touches on all of those unsaid things that make up any family complex.

I have been watching my own father, now 61, taking care of his father, 94, in his declining years - driving through the night to tend to some emergency, bathing him, dealing with his finances, trying to mend fences from 60 years of wasted time, mistakes, and apathy. My own relationship with my father has been strained for some time. My three brothers all share a similar relationship with him.  It is certain we have all left more unsaid than said. Thing is, my father is a decent man - a Ward Cleaver type with a temper. What Roth shows us is that in the end, those things do not matter. Caring for your parent is an obligation, a duty. Raise your children, bury your parents.

I haven’t read much better nonfiction in a long while. Roth is climbing the charts as one of my favorite writers and I’m glad to have his life’s work to get through.

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

Publisher: Viking Penguin

Date: January 1, 2008

Geraldine Brooks’ People of the Book follows the fictional story of the Sarajevo Haggadah, an illuminated manuscript, and an Australian book conservator named Hanna Heath. We follow her story forward throughout the book, while simultaneously through vignettes, tracking the story of the Haggadah, which she has been hired to conserve, back to its creation. I have read that this book is a souped up version of the Da Vinci Code, but outside of the setting occasionally taking place in a museum, I don’t agree with the comparison.

With the drama clearly surrounding the tales of the Haggadah’s voyage, the story of Hanna herself can be lost. Her story of failure in real-life relationships - with her mother, with men. This was the real tale for me. How can we spend our lives with our mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, girlfriends, etc… - all supposed loved ones, and still be apathetic to them, even in their most dire moments? As much as the tale of the Haggadah brings up issues such as anti-semitism and the inquisition, the story of Hanna was the subtle driving force for me, and why I enjoyed the book so much.

The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris

Publisher: Little, Brown & Company

Date: January 2010

This book has been pretty hyped up since it came out earlier this year. I wanted to see what it was all about, and I’m glad I did.

Every once in a while I will get into a book that really drives me down into a dark place. This one had all the makings of being one of those books, being totally devoid of all the humor Ferris showed in Then We Came to the End. We are given a pretty ordinary family - financially successful father and mother who are in love. Teenage daughter who is distant and emotionally detatched from them. The story really revolves around the deconstruction of Tim, the father, and his family around him.

How can we have our lives fall apart like that? Depression, disease, job loss, death, and on and on. Ferris leaves Tim’s affliction “Unnamed”, but seems to represent all of these things, where our will is irrelevant when larger things are working around us to drag us down.

Anyway…I read right through this book. Ferris has a wonderful ease to his writing which is simple, yet beautiful, making us turn the page with passages like this:

“They say it takes a long time to really get to know somebody. They say a good marriage requires work. They say it’s important to change alongside your partner to avoid growing apart. They talk about patience, sacrifice, compromise, tolerance. It seems the goal of these bearers of conventional wisdom is to get back to zero. They would have you underwater, tethered by chains to the bow of a ship full of treasure now sunk, struggling to free yourself to make it to the surface. With luck he will free himself, too, and then you can bob along together, scanning the horizon for some hint of land. They say boredom sets in, passion dissipates, idiosyncrasies start to grate, and the same problems repeat themselves. Why do you do it? Security, family, companionship. Ideally you do it for love. There’s something they don’t elaborate on. They just say the word and you’re supposed to know what it means, and after twenty years of marriage, you are held up as exemplars of that simple foundation, love, upon which (with sweeping arms) all this is built. But don’t let appearances fool you. That couple with twenty years still fights, they still go to bed angry, they still let days pass without –
The trouble with these cheap bromides, she thought, is that they don’t capture the half of it.”

So, basically, a fantastic read and one of my favorites of the year.

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

Publisher: Bobbs Merrill

Date: April 15, 1943

Okay, so over a year ago I made a sweeping statement about Ayn Rand. I said her writing had no soul. I said I wouldn’t be reading anything by her anytime soon. I had tried to get through The Fountainhead a few years back and stopped around page 100. Same with Atlas Shrugged. I found her characters ridiculous and predictable. Her heroes were comical while everyone else seemed to be hopeless, flaky, unreliable, or devoid of any morality. I made these conclusions after reading a few pages.

I don’t know what possessed me to pick up this book a few weeks ago, but regardless, I did. I made it through the 694 pages pretty easily and with a few eye rolls. Her characters are not as ridiculous as I thought in my first reading of it, though she seems so desperate to make sure we understand them. Take Roark for example. Here is how Rand describes him on page 1:

“He did not laugh as his eyes stopped in awareness of the earth around him. His face was like a law of nature - a thing one could not question, alter or implore. It had high cheekbones over gaunt, hollow cheeks; gray eyes, cold and steady; a contemptuous mouth, shut tight, the mouth of an executioner or a saint.”

“His face was like a law of nature?” And I have to say the following quote was a bit much for me as well:

“People turned to look at Howard Roark as he passed. Some remained staring at him with sudden resentment. They could give no reason for it: it was an instinct his presence awakened in most people. Howard Roark saw no one.”

The funny thing was that, as I continued reading, I got past those goofy descriptions and started really enjoying the story. This surprised me. Of course, Roark is the superman/architect who embodies Rand’s philosophy of objectivism. All others are coulda-beens, phonies, or failures in his wake as he battles his way through the challenges of a world that fails to recognize his uncompromising genius. There are some amazing and insightful passages in this book that have me eating crow for what I said earlier about Rand.

So I did enjoy it when it was all said and done. And I will be be open to reading more of her work in the future. Possibly We The Living. Maybe I will become a full fledged member of the Ayn Rand Fan Club after that. We shall see.

So here we are. Months later and I’m just waltzing back into tumblr. Let’s just say I’ve been busy…kids are growing up (see photo), I’ve taken on a new job, yada, yada, yada. The good thing is that while I haven’t posted anything for ages, I have been reading as much as ever, which has been wonderful. I will try to post some thoughts on my favorite books from the past few months over the next little while…just to play catch up. Also, you will not be hearing anything beyond this sentence about the following book, A Room with a View by EM Forster. I’m sure at least half a dozen of you are absolutely riveted to your chairs! I suppose it was the creepy super photo Casey posted of me hanging out at his daughter Ayla’s 4th birthday party (our kids are pals) that sealed my return. Anyway, hello again everyone, I’ve missed you terribly.

Netherland by Joseph O’Neill

Publisher: Harper Perennial

Date: May, 2008

I first heard about Netherland last year when President Obama was said to be reading it. Like many of you, this was a major selling point to me and I’m sure Joseph O’Neill’s agent and bank account were also happy with the exposure.

Our narrator is a man named Hans van den Broek, a successful Dutch Stockbroker living in a post-9/11 New York. Alone in NYC, Hans is left to his childhood love of cricket to pass the time.

This is a great book. I loved the introspection and the numb, plodding feel of this man drifting around New York alone, without his family, depressed. He is disjointed from just about everything except his cricket friends and even those people are distant from him and even further singled out from the rest of the people in New York. It’s an almost dream-like tone O’Neill sets. Sometimes it is through the reminisces of Hans’ childhood with his mother and other times it is through beautiful passages like these:

“I felt above all, tired. Tiredness: if there was a constant symptom of the disease in our lives at this time, it was tiredness. A banal state of affairs, yes - but our problems were banal, the stuff of women’s magazines. All lives, I remember thinking, eventually funnel into the advice columns of women’s magazines.”

and…

“I felt shame - I see this clearly, now - at the instinctive recognition in myself of an awful enfeebling fatalism, a sense that the great outcomes were but randomly connected to our endeavors, that life was beyond mending, that love was loss, that nothing worth saying was sayable, that dullness was general, that disintegration was irresistible.”

Anyway, I’ve gone on too long. A wonderful book that would easily crack my 10 Favorite New York Related Books.

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