Baby Got Books

The NYT’s A.O. Scott enthusiastically endorses the movie Little Children, based upon the book that I hated by Tom Perrotta.  His review includes such “truisms” as:

For the playground really is a scene of primordial brutality, in which a few agreed-upon rules — play nice, share your toys, no hitting — barely suppress the essential savagery of the human species.  and  It can be observed that the chorus of viciously competitive moms, who reappear now and then throughout the movie to pass judgment and enforce social norms, amounts to a caricature, tinged with snobbery and misogyny.

Govern yourself accordingly.

Yet, everyone is in agreement that the movie version of All The King’s Men (a book I loved) sucks royally (heh, a pun!).   It was rated lower by the local rag than Jackass 2.  Ouch.  No justice in this world.
What the two movies have in common, and I think is too cool, is that both feature Jackie Earl Haley.  You may remember JEH as Kelly in The Bad News Bears.  I’ll always remember him as Moocher in the greatest film of all time, Breaking Away (which starred Dennis Quaid and the dad from 16 Candles).  Don’t take my word for it, the NYT includes the movie in its list of the top 1000 movies of all time (see the original trailer).

Welcome to the Sufjan Stevens news channel.  This just in: NPR will be webcasting a live Sufjan Stevens concert (including opening band) tonight starting at 8 PM.  Usually they will leave the concert up for streaming a few weeks afterwards if you can’t listen live.

• The Chicago Manual of Style is now available online. For 30 days, it’s free. I’m going to save up all of my burning usage and style questions for a 30-day marathon session. Nerd-vana.
• Find out what the name of your band would be at the King Dork band name generator. My band’s name would be “Slap-Happy Homes” - here’s my album cover:

• Cormac McCarthy’s new book, The Road, takes place in a post-apocalyptic dystopia. Say, “post-apocalyptic” - isn’t that a little science fiction-y? That sound you hear is Dr J, BGB’s resident McCarthy scholar, weeping in his car. Dr J has no truck with the sci-fi. The NYT loves it though. I think.
• Charles Frazier’s new book, Thirteen Moons, comes out Tuesday. Michael Schaub at Bookslut says Frazier “made headlines by getting paid $8 million, 17 NFL teams, and the state of Delaware for his new novel.” Apparently the book is worth it.
• Mrs. Cayenne says, “Read Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. It’s excellent.”

The Atlanta music scene has weathered an an embarrassment of riches over the past few weeks. It all started with an incredible show by Cat Power at the Variety Playhouse, which I happily attended (listen to parts of the new album, The Greatest). The New York Times ran a nice article about singer Chan Marshall a few days after the show.

A few days later, the Flaming Lips were at the Tabernacle (I did not attend) - all reports from friends in the house were that it was a spectacular show. You can listen to the Lips on their web site (click “audio”).

The Lips were followed by the Georgia Music Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the World Congress Center. The highlight of the evening was a performance by R.E.M., including Bill Berry on drums. I watched the show on our local PBS station, but Beth was there and has this excellent report (with video). Also: Michael Stipe referred to Athens, GA as “The ATH” during the show, which cracks me up.
The highlight for me though was Sufjan Stevens at the Fox Theatre. It was so different than anything I’d ever seen before that the show is permanently in my Top 5 music shows of all time (which changes like a mood ring). I should also mention that I sat in the second row for this concert. I’m not sure how that happened, but I was so fortunate I can hardly stand it. I usually mock people mercilessly for bringing cameras to the rock and roll show, but with second row seats I was willing to be “that guy.”

Sufjan was on just about every critic’s “year end/best of” list last year. His music is hard to describe. He’s often described as “new folk.” That description would usually send me running to an exit, so that’s not very satisfying. One critic called Sufjan “the king of research-paper rock.” I mention that review (which was tepid) only to justify this big ass post about a band I saw on a book blog. Anyway, he’s definitely not rock - as in “Whoa! That guy ROCKS.” His songs can be lushly orchestrated or very spare and minimalist. Let’s just say his music fits squarely under the “indie music” umbrella and move on.

I’ll skip the opening band, which was interesting, because this post is already too long. We knew we were in for a unique experience when Sufjan took to the stage with 14 other musicians. There were at least 8 people on various strings, a three man horn section, keyboard, guitars/banjo, drums. Sufjan went back and forth between piano, guitar, and banjo. Everyone was decked out in cloth wings, feathered bird masks, and khaki uniforms. You could tell Sufjan apart from the others in the band, because his uniform had yellow piping and the others had red. While at times it looked like it might be a Max Fischer production, it didn’t come off as pretentious or lame. It all seemed to be sincere and earnest, and it just worked.

A temporary sound glitch cause a piercing electronic squeal that forced the band to cover their ears while the boss struck a Rodin pose. The evening was otherwise flawless.

Some haters have commented that song titles like, “The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is out to get us!” might be a little pretentious. Once Sufjan explained the song (which he’s performing above), it is difficult to the imagine it being called anything else. Somewhere in here, fellow BGB contributor, Shaft, turned to me and said, “Damn, he can tell a story.” Which is true.

For the encore, the wings were put away and Sufjan did a song by himself, followed by one more with the band, all in their civilian clothes.

The best song of the evening, for me, was Chicago. I managed to capture the performance on my digital camera, which I didn’t even know could do this trick. Sweet. Enjoy my video below. The sound isn’t the greatest, but you can get a good idea of what it was all about. A commenter on the YouTube page where my video resides says, “I nearly exploded with happiness during Chicago, it was so beautiful I could hardly take it.”

And that sentiment really sums up the show. Unlike just about any show that I’ve ever been to, everyone sat in near silence to take it all in. I got up to go to the restroom in this enormous venue and saw no one else in the aisles going or coming. It was a spectacular evening top to the bottom. If this concert is coming within 750 miles of your land, check it out.  Here’s a CNN review of the same show with handy tour schedule.
An aside: If you’ve seen the movie Little Miss Sunshine, you’ve heard the music of Sufjan Stevens. Chicago was the song that played as the family loaded up in the VW van for the first time. No Man’s Land was the second (and last) song to play over the credits.

Tonight is the season premiere of the Gilmore Girls on the new CW network (Country & Western?). I love the show, but I keep getting subtle clues that maybe I’m not in the target audience. For starters, the network runs non-stop feminine hygiene product and teen acne acne lotion commercials during each episode. They haven’t run me off yet though.  Here’s my tip: If you really want to keep a late 30’s guy from watching the show, quit making endless references to literature and indie rock bands that 18 year old girls have no chance of keeping up with. Seriously. Also: keep running these ads on the side of city buses.  This just might do it.

I went to see Little Miss Sunshine this weekend, which was fantastic.

However, I was surprised to see that two of the three previews were for movies based on recent books. Both movies looked terrible.

The first apparent stinker, was Little Children based on the book by Tom Perrotta. I picked up Little Children when it came out based solely upon the idea, “hey this is the guy who wrote Election, this is going to be awesome.” It wasn’t. It’s possible that I read this book at the wrong time in my life. I picked up the book within a few months of the birth of my daughter, so maybe I wasn’t ready to settle down with a book that is largely about how morally bankrupt parenting is for our generation. Weirdly, the trailer for the movie was ominously paced as though the movie was a horror film. Can’t tell you what that’s all about.

The second preview was for Augusten Burroughs’ Running with Scissors. The book was a very disturbing memoir, as told by a witty author (according to BGB’s Nitro). The movie trailer, however, appears to be for some other story that is a mad cap romp full of wacky hi-jinks. I kept waiting for the Walking on Sunshine intro music to start.

While I haven’t seen any previews yet, the movie adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis looks like it will at least be in keeping with the graphic novels (based upon these stills). The movie will apparently be in French (Satrapi lives in Paris) with English subtitles, which should ensure that the people who need to see the movie most will stay far, far away.

J.R. Moehringer, author of a BGB-favorite - The Tender Bar, has a day job.  He’s a Pulitzer-prize winning staff writer for the L.A. Times.   He’s written a great story in today’s paper about the retirement of the head of the Mississippi Delta’s Bolivar County library system.  Bolivar County is one of the most illiterate places in the U.S. (41% illiteracy rate). (link via Librarian.net).

Next week is Banned Book Week, co-sponsored by the American Library Association.  This year’s motto is “Free people read freely.” Please note our little badge over in the side bar showing our support.

Librarians have an appreciation for our First Amendment (get a quick refresher) that is visceral and put to the test on a frequent basis.  Often, as with the Patriot Act, librarians are at the head of the fight to stop the encroachment on one of our most basic rights.  Hug a librarian next week as you read and buy books that are in the crossfire.  Here’s the list of last year’s Top 10 most challenged books.

Broken for You, by Stephanie Kallos, takes place in Seattle, Washington. The book centers around two women, Margaret Hughes and Wanda Schultz. Margaret is in her early 70s and, but for her marriage that ended 40 years after the death of her young son, she has spent most of her life in self-inflicted seclusion. Margaret is extremely wealthy and lives in a mansion that is filled with priceless porcelain. After Margaret is diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, she decides to open up her life by taking in borders and in walks Wanda. Wanda came to Seattle in search of her ex-boyfriend who dumped her and moved away. She is convinced that he is in Seattle so she sells her belongings and moves.

As the story develops, it turns out that Margaret’s wealth was accumulated by her father who was a Nazi sympathizer who fenced the porcelian that the Nazis stole from Jews. Because of that, she feels that her life is cursed and that she is not entitled to any happiness. Wanda, whose parents abandoned her when she was young, has abandonment issues of her own, and like Margaret, has built her life behind a wall of seclusion.

As a friendship develops between the two women and other characters begin to enter and change the women’s lives, a parallel story develops between Wanda’s father, who abandoned her when she was 6, and a Holocust survivor, who has a missing piece of porcelian from Margaret’s collection.

While it may seem like too many things are going on at once, the author was able to tell the two stories without getting too mired in detail, and I did not get lost as a reader. I really enjoyed reading this book because it was about healing, letting go of the past, taking chances on getting out of one’s comfort zone, and tearing down walls of seclusion. What could have been a very depressing and sad story, actually became uplifting without being preachy or sappy. Overall, it was a great read.

I went out and purchased The Seduction of Water by Carol Goodman immediately after finishing Goodman’s The Lake of Dead Languages. Like Dead Languages this is a mystery. In the book, Iris Greenfelder is a teacher and struggling writer. Iris’ mother was a famous writer who wrote 2 novels based on Irish folklore of what would have been a trilogy, except that she mysteriously died in a fire when Iris was ten prior to completing the third installment.

Iris has lives the last 30 years believing that her mother betrayed she and her father and that her existence impeded her mother’s ability to finish the third novel.  She struggles with trying to determine whether her mother ever loved her at all.
In the beginning, I actually liked this book better the Dead Languages because it was not as dark, and I was captured Irish by the folklore and mythology that was woven into the plot. I thought that the author did a fantastic job of weaving in the mystery of what happened to Iris’ mother, what her mother was hiding, and what happened to the manuscript. For some reason, the book lost its momentum about halfway through, and I felt that the story become more about Iris’ romonace with an younger, ex-con who was her former student and her conflicting feelings about the relationship.

At the end, the author was able to tie up some lose ends, although done somewhat summarily. I did not feel as if I had wasted my time, and there were parts that I really enjoyed, but I certainly did not have the “wow” factor.

If you are looking for a book to keep you company, it is worth the read, but “The Lake of Dead Languages” was better.

I’m always dubious of reading programs that try to get an entire city or state to read one book. This week, Jeb Bush held a press conference to announce the book that all of Florida should read, The Zero Game by Brad Metzler. After comparing the book to the DaVinci Code, Bush made this pitch:

If you could only do one thing really well to be successful in life it is probably to be really literate because then you can acquire knowledge, be respective of where you are, who you are and with that comes all sorts of other things.

The apple doesn’t fall far from that other apple, eh? An A for effort, I suppose. It seems that these “One Book, [insert location here]” reading programs are doomed to fail. An example: read Bookslut’s hilarious summary of why some wingnuts in Galveston went apeshit when their “one book” was The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - the most harmless book ever. These are people who were not being respective of themselves or where they are.

DailyLit is a great new way to look busy and tackle some of the classics that you’ve been meaning to read. The free service will e-mail you bite-sized chunks of books that are in the public domain at intervals that you specify. I’ve signed up Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, which will come my way in 241 separate e-mails, M-F. I’ve received two sections, and so far I’m a fan. If you get to a cliff hanger, the e-mail allows you to click a link to get the next section immediately.

If you’re a fan of audio books, LibriVox provides public domain books in MP3 format for ready download to your iPod. The books are read aloud by volunteers, and you can sign up to read sections of your favorite classics. I tried this service out about five months ago. I downloaded P.G. Wodehouse’s Psmith in the City, and it is still on my iPod, largely unheard. I found that settings where I listen to my iPod, the gym, the bus, the train, planes, etc., were not conducive to focusing on a story. Your mileage may vary. If you’re wondering if audio books “count” as reading, a real-life librarian says yes, “as long as they’re unabridged.”
In other news: last week-ish BoingBoing pointed the way to a hilarious, 70’s vintage, German sex-ed book for small children. You won’t need to understand German to enjoy the book. The illustrations tell you everything that you need to know and then some. I’m pretty sure this book will scar your child for life

My book club recently compiled a list of all the books that we have read since we started the group five years ago. I was tempted to put a “thumbs up/thumbs down” symbol next to each book but that would take all the fun out of others exploring these books. Enjoy.

“There are pages that are just fall down funny” is the quote on the cover of this debut novel by Brady Udall, The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint. After wading through 400 pages of this strange and at times grotesque book, I did not find ONE funny part. Since my book group concurred with my opinion, I do not think this has anything to do with my sense of humor.

The books follows the life of Edgar Mint, a dirt-poor Native American boy living on a reservation, who at the age of 7 is run over by a mailman. What part of his body is run over you may be asking? His head. The tire literally rolls over the side of his head. Left for dead, the first of many “miracles” occurs in that Edgar lives and spends a few months recovering in a hospital where he meets Doctor Barry, aka a future drug addict who is obsessed with Edgar and spends his life hunting him down.

Edgar is then sent to an Indian School where the fun times begins. Some of the hilarious incidents include incessant bullying at the hands of his classmates who actually make him eat shit; the time when his classmates light a rolled-up newspaper on fire and shove it up his best friends ass, or the time he tries to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff. Are you beginning to understand why I don’t get that this book is toted as being fall down funny?

Edgar is “saved” from the school by converting to Mormonism and being relocated to a dysfunctional Mormon family. At this stage in the book, you are hoping that he can finally find a nice family and lead a somewhat “normal” childhood. Instead, the family is completely whacky including the son, known as the Brain, who torments Edgar and the mom who ends up having an affair with Dr. Barry (see reference above for his obsession with Edgar).

The novel ends with Edgar leaving the Mormons to fulfill his lifelong mission of finding the mailman who ran over him so that he can tell him that he is alive and well. Lo and behold, the mailman is dead but his wife then reveals to Edgar that she and the mailman were planning on adopting Edgar but with the cruel twist of fate in which they thought Edgar was dead, they lived out the rest of their lives miserable. The book neatly wraps up with Edgar meeting a woman with kids and living happily ever after. I know I just gave away the ending but since I don’t want anyone to read this book - who cares.

If the author was trying to show that Edgar led a miracle life because he survived and in the end was going to end up a happy adult, I just don’t buy it. There is no way that this kid who was off-kilter (as demonstrated by him keeping a urinal cake (yes - you read it correctly a urinal cake) as a good luck charm) and went through so much trauma was going to turn out okay.

This was one of those books that I can’t figure out what the author’s purpose was in writing it. I hated this book. And to add insult to injury, Michael Stipe’s film production company optioned the rights to the book. I just don’t get it……..

The Man Booker Prize Short List has been announced.  Get your Brit Lit on.  The Short List:

• The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
• The Secret River by Kate Grenville
• Carry Me Down by  M.J. Hyland
• In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar
• Mother’s Milk by Edward St. Aubyn
• The Night Watch by  Sarah Waters

I still don’t know anything about any of these titles. Last year, I had read several of the Booker-nominated titles and was at least familiar with a few others.  This year I’m off my game.

Cold Sassy Tree by OLive Ann Burns takes place in the summer of 1908 in Cold Sassy, Georgia. Will Tweedy is 14 years old and is the only grandson of Rucker Blackslee, the town merchant. The book begins that day after the Fourth of July when Rucker Blackslee marries his 34 year old employee, three weeks after his wife’s death. That’s when the real adventure begins for Will and his family.

What I liked about this book is that over the course of the summer, you watch Will grow up, and given the cynicism of the world, it was delightful to read about his adventures, his observations of the world, and the lessons that he learned from his experiences. At the same time, you read about his grandpa growing young again and going against the norms and expectations of the townspeople.

The author did a fantastic job of depicting life in a small town in the South. There were times when I laughed out loud. This is the only book (since I read The Kite Runner) that was so touching I could not help but me openly cry at the end.

In The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman, Jane Hudson returns to her private boarding school, the Heart Lake School for Girls, 20 years after her graduation as a Latin teacher. The last week of her senior year, three students, two of which were her roommates and one was the guy she secretly had a crush on, committed suicide. For the past 20 years, Jane has carried the guilts of their deaths and the truth behind their deaths with her. She shared the truth in her journal which became missing shortly before her graduation. Upon her return, some of her students begin mysteriously dying which appears to be an re-enactment of what happened 20 years ago. As people begin to wonder if Jane’s presence has influenced these events, pages of her missing journal begin to appear.

This was a very dark and gothic book which was full of sexual rites and pagan rituals. In some ways, it reminded me of Donna Tartt’s “The Secret History”, but lacking some of the depth. Nonetheless, it’s a good mystery and I enjoyed it enough to go out and purchase another book by this author.

In an effort to be like the cool kids with MBA’s, I decided to read The One Thing You Need to Know (. . . About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success), by Marcus Buckingham. I had seen Mr. Buckingham speak at an internal company meeting before, and I, like pretty much everyone there, was pretty much mesmerized. He’s a very dynamic speaker, and he throws out some pretty unconventional ideas in a very convincing fashion. After seeing him speak, and after seeing this book (his third) on all the cool kids’ bookshelves, I felt that I had to add it to my stack.

I think this might be the first B-school type book to be reviewed on BGB. Call me a trailblazer, a trendsetter, a pioneer, or whatever you like. But I figure If I’m going to spend my precious reading time on something, well then I’m going to post on it.

The book is a pretty interesting read. Despite a surprisingly large number of typos (maybe the editor’s boss should have read the book for its content and moved the editor into a position that wouldn’t exploit his or her weaknesses in spelling and grammar), it flows pretty well and is pretty engaging. By the way, my editor just told me to stop using the word “pretty”, which by my count has made six appearances already (including the one in this sentence).

I don’t want to cheat Mr. Buckingham out of royalties by giving away the “secrets” revealed in the book, but I think I can safely say that he tries to distill the essence of great leadership, great management, and sustained individual success each down to one critical philosophy. My problem with the book (not to say that I didn’t enjoy it or that I don’t give due credit to Mr. Buckingham’s ideas) is that I’m not sure what the takeaway from the book should be. As I mentioned, I don’t read many books in this genre, and so I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with what I’ve “learned”.

This is due to a couple of factors. First, I think it’s safe to say that some of these guiding principles or philosophies that make you a great leader or a great manager apparently can’t be taught or learned. So you either have them or you don’t. In that respect, this book doesn’t provide the type of insight that can turn you into something that you’re not; rather, it provides a method for you to determine if you should bother trying your hand at leading or managing. Second, it’s really difficult to figure out how to apply his “one thing” for sustained individual success in the real world. While he acknowledges that it may seem a bit far-fetched and somewhat impractical, he didn’t convince me that it actually isn’t. Without giving it away, suffice it to say that I agree with him that, for example, if I didn’t like fighting fires, I shouldn’t be a firefighter, because I would have difficulty exhibiting sustained success in that role. Gotcha. But when you take his theory down to a more granular, real-world level, it’s hard to understand how I’m supposed to change my role in the manner suggested and get away with it.

This is not a negative review. If you like this kind of stuff, I would recommend this book, because it may change the way you think about your career, or at least provide you with a different lens to look through. But I think my strength, and my path to sustained individual success as a reader, lies in reading fiction or humor.

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal ran an excellent debate between the founder of WikiPedia and the Senior VP of the Encyclopedia Brittanica. For me there is no contest. WikiPedia is free. You can’t beat free, I’ve tried. It’s huge. It has many more entries than Brittanica. Brittanica claims to be more authoritative because it is written and edited by experts. The fact is, WikiPedia has proven to be good enough for almost all of the instances that I’ve used it. The death knell for Brittanica though is their arrogance. They decide what is important for you to know and worthy for them to print. That’s just not good enough in the internet age. Here are a few examples.

A few days ago, I wanted to refresh my memory and confirm that the David Bowie song Five Years was the opening track to Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (it is). The WikiPedia entry for the album has track listing, the story arc of the album, and a description of its significance. It seemed awfully authoritative, whether or not it was written by an expert. A search at the Encyclopedia Brittanica leads to two articles, one on Bowie, the other to “glam rock”. The bulk of both articles, which based on word count were likely to reference the album in passing only, is hidden in a pay area. Winner: WikiPedia.

Here’s a completely juvenile example, but it was something I wanted to know. I came across an acronym, UFIA, on the news aggregater site Fark.com. WikiPedia told me what it meant (scroll down to “cliches”). Brittanica can’t be bothered. Winner: WikiPedia.

Some might argue that on scholarly subjects Brittanica would reign supreme. I doubt it. For a work project, I needed to get my hands on some specific information about trichloroethylene quickly. Rather than pull a reference book off my shelf, I looked it up on WikiPedia. Everything that I needed was right there. I was even able to legally cut and paste some reaction information directly into the document that I was working on. That’s the understanding that WikiPedia and I have. Looking up the same search term now on Brittanica’s site, their entry is a whopping 155 words. Half of which are hidden behind a pay user wall. Winner: WikiPedia.

There you have it. From my extremely limited sampling pool, WikiPedia has you covered for science or juvenile shennanigans.

This book is another historical fiction. Tulip Fever takes place in 1630s Amsterdam.

Sophia is a women in her early 20s who married a wealthy merchant that is nearly 40 years her senior named Cornelis Sandvoort. Sophia married Cornelis for his money and security, and Cornelis, whose first wife and children are deceased, married Sophia because he wanted a second chance at life. Nonetheless, he and Sophia have been unable to conceive a child. Cornelis hires a young painter, Jan van Loos, to paint a portrait of him and Sophia, and an affair between Jan and Sophia ensues. As the story unfolds, the lies, desire, and deceit gradually escalate.

What I liked about this book is that it is told through the eyes of several different characters, Cornelis, Sophia, Maria (their maid), William (the maid’s boyfriend), Jan, and other spectators who were impacted by this affair. The author did a great job of weaving into the story the tulip mania that was going on in Holland at that time, and the greed that came from it.

It’s a quick and easy read and quite entertaining.