Friday Distractions

Check this out: New York magazine has a full feature on the rise of indie bookstores (in New York).  Click around.  There are several interesting stories in there.

Have you forgotten about the Fake AP Stylebook?  Me, too.  I had to go back and start catching up with it all over again. It’s still hilarious.  This recent tweet in particular cracked me up.  And this one.

This just in:  Fate of newly discovered Franz Kafka manuscripts are caught up in a Kafka-esque “nightmare”.  Tune in next week when we discuss unpublished works of Joseph Heller caught in a Catch-22.

This just in:  Apparently fart joke books are NOT the key to getting boys to read, as was erroneously reported everywhere last week (just in time for the release of a book with fart jokes.)  A rigorous scientific study has found that comics are the key to getting boys  to read.  (Just in time for ComicCon says the story.)  Stay tuned next week when it will be revealed that cartoon characters on cereal boxes are the key to getting boys to read.  (Just in time for the triumphant return of Fruit Brute.) As a long time boy reader, I’m beginning to take umbrage with this whole line of inquiry.

Lifehacker names the top 5 book recommendation services.

Dave & Valentino’s school open for business in Southern Sudan.

Check out this handy graphic that explains what author/idea guy Clay Shirkey means when he talks about the internet tapping into the “cognitive surplus”.

The movie adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood comes out in December. In Japan. I’m not sure how that helps us. But Johnny Greenwood from Radiohead is doing the score.

The Ask

A few months ago,  one of our reviewers (Shaft) posted a decidedly negative review of Sam Lipsyte’s latest novel The Ask. We both loved Lipsyte’s phenomenal Home Land, so it was a bit of a surprise to read his take on the follow-up. Since I knew he had a copy that he wouldn’t be sad to see go, I decided to take it off his hands.  Where Shaft was left disappointed, I thought The Ask was a surprisingly deep and thoughtful effort.  Our mileage varied considerably.

Our protagonist is Milo, a schlub whose one thing to look forward to each day is a turkey wrap from the place across the street from the mediocre New York City liberal arts college where he works in the development office.  Milo loses his job (and ready access to turkey wraps) for several reasons, most notably for verbally attacking an overly entitled art student, whose dad happens to be a potential large donor to the school.

This failure sets Milo adrift and into a slow downward spiral.  To his surprise, he is called back to the development office in the hopes that he can land one more big fish – a college friend Purdy.  Now Milo’s future happiness seems to hinge on whether he can bring himself to ask a Brahmin from his past for a very large sum of money:

Purdy and Milo are thus thrown together, but Purdy has his own “ask” for Milo.  Through their renewed and strained relationship Lipsyte explores a number of themes, not least of which is the role of class in American society.  Purdy, representing the uber-wealthy strata, employs old classmates and is able to make things happen by merely requesting them. Milo, a struggling salaryman’s financial situation seems much more dire in comparison, but he in turn is seen in an enviable position to those that are lower on the socio-economic ladder.  No one, it should be said, is entirely happy.

The Purdy/Milo & gang relationships also suggest that college is a specific window in life when otherwise rigorous social and class structures break down.  The Ask notes that circumstance and proximity throw people together into illusory friendships that would never happen in the “outside” world.   (Surely if Facebook has taught us anything, it is this.) It is ironic that Milo finds himself once again in a college, and among some of his old friends, and yet is the loneliest and most alienated that he has ever been in his life.

Child-rearing is a spot-on target of Lipsyte’s biting satire (pre-school pedagogy squabbles are a highlight).  The standard bearer for the so-called “millennial” generation, Horace, is also ripe for parody.  When Milo tries to smooth over a sexual harassment complaint filed by Horace (one of the reasons Milo was originally hired), the millennials’ reputed “whatever dude/can’t be bothered” attitude is on full display:

“Didn’t you complain about me?”
“Yeah I guess I did.  But more like as a joke.”
“Did you make an official written complaint?”
“Yeah, but in a jokey way.”
“Those go on our record, Horace. Those are in our file. As soon as a company hires you they begin plotting the paper trail with which to fire you. Didn’t you know that?”
“Sort of.”

Horace always speaks in his own hipster-slang argot that Milo marvels over:

Horace’s swerves in diction always amazed.  He once explained that like many in this country, he spoke several dialects: Standard American English, Black American English, American Television English, East Coast Faux Skater English, Foodie French, and Drug Russian.

I loved “listening” to Horace talk – absolutely one of my favorite characters.  But I digress…

As Shaft noted in his review, The Ask is not generally the laugh-out-loud knee-slapper that Home Land was.  The novel is overall much darker and world weary.  It also has a lot more to say than Home Land did.  Although a much more serious work, The Ask also serves up witty observations, wonderful dialog, and incredible word play, all while telling a poignant story. I really enjoyed this novel.  Now you’ll have to read it to offer the tie-breaking review for Shaft and I.

All My Friends Are Dead

My 6 year old daughter has a morbid fascination with death and dead stuff. Thankfully All My Friends Are Dead, a new picture book by Avery Monson and Jory John, is for adults or I’m afraid that we’d have to start working through the “why” and “how come” of all 96-pages of gallows humor.

The e-book tide turns?

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the “agency model” e-book pricing system is under anti-trust scrutiny by the State of Connecticut:

“These agreements among publishers, Amazon and Apple appear to have already resulted in uniform prices for many of the most popular e-books—potentially depriving consumers of competitive prices…

Check out the interesting “History of e-book pricing” sidebar.

Meanwhile, reports of “Kindle prejudice” have begun to turn up.  Clearly these reports are being filed by people who have never experienced actual prejudice.

Travels

Last weekend, I was able to spend 24 hours in beautiful Asheville, NC.  Asheville is a beautiful mountain town with lots to offer, but I was most excited about making my first trip to Malaprops Bookstore.   It’s a terrific independent bookstore with a great vibe — a southern-mountain-hippie thing–good coffee, and a great selection.  It’s a great place to spend some time browsing and hanging out.  While wandering the aisles, we were commenting on what an odd, self-effacing name Malaprops is for a bookstore.  I was familiar with the word “malaprop”, but I didn’t know the origin of the word until now.

In other bookish news, the beautiful Grove Park Inn sells a Great Gatsby Abbey ale.   To the best of my knowledge, Gatsby didn’t make it down to the Blue Ridge.  But he was a mysterious fellow.  Great Gatsby Abbey is brewed by Asheville’s Highland Brewing Company, but it appears to be served only at the Inn.

I drove past another interesting bookstore several times - The Battery Park Book Exchange and Champagne Bar. Once there was even a woman out front playing the cello. Sadly, I didn’t get a chance to stick my head in. Next time.

Ordinary Thunderstorms

If I didn’t know any better, I’d think Stephen King was a hack right about now.  It was on his over-the-top recommendation that I got my hands on Ordinary Thunderstorms, by William Boyd.  The book tells the story of a climatologist in London who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time and goes down a rabbithole of conspiracy, intrigue, danger, suspense, blah, blah, blah.  Or so Stephen King said in his review.

In truth, the book certainly starts out that way.  Adam Kindred is interviewing for a job in London and following a casual interaction with a man in a pub, he attempts to return the man’s forgotten briefcase to him.  A murder occurs, Kindred is the primary suspect, and so Kindred goes into hiding.  And with that stage set, the book just coasts to the finish (I won’t say the “end”, because frankly there wasn’t one).

I don’t know that I’ve consumed too many books that fall into the “beach read” category, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this one probably falls into that bucket.  It’s harmless, fairly well-written, evenly-paced, fiction.  Without any edge that I could discern.  And don’t even get me started about the utter lack of engaging suspense or the total lack of denouement.  I think the only “twist” that Boyd managed was to get you set up for all sorts of crazy stuff that could have happened at the end, only to trick you by not having anything happen.

If what I’ve described sounds good to you, then have at it — this one is perfect for you.  But I’m bored and annoyed and I think I’ll boycott Stephen King for a while.

Friday Miscellany

Some friends that know well my love for Chabon’s Kavalier and Clay sent me this sweet post card of the Golem of Prague.

I may have officially become a cynic.  An AP story was all over the lit blogosphere this week. The gist: “OMG yall!  Boys don’t read.  Like, EVER.  The only way to arrest their retardation is to buy them books with fart jokes. Do it now, yall! For the kids.”   (I’m paraphrasing. )  The article quotes the author of the book Sweet Farts.  Good thing that there just happens to be a brand new sequel coming out next week: Sweet Farts: Rippin’ it Old School.  Someone’s publicity flack needs a raise.

Amazon ups the ante with an $139 Kindle.  Jeff Bezos says, “At $139, we expect many people will buy multiple Kindles for the home and family.”  Really?  I guess you could just fan them out on the coffee table or something.  Give ‘em out as party favors.  That sort of thing.

Be friends with all of your favorite publishers:  The Best Publisher Pages on Facebook

Paste’s Charles McNair on Bret Easton Ellis’s Imperial Bedrooms: “I submit that any reader who finishes this novel and is able to use that word for it—“entertaining”—might honestly want to take a hard look in the mirror and question the condition of his soul.”  Ouch.

Famous “Man Rooms”, including Hemingway’s study, Thoreau’s cabin, and Twain’s writing hut.  Got to get e one of those.

An interesting comparison between Huxley’s Brave New World and Orwell’s 1984 – in comics form

And this is hilarious if you haven’t seen it yet:

Huck and Jim Enjoy Hamlet

I’m reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, DailyLit’s Big Summer Read — one e-mail at a time.   In the latest scene to crack me up, The Duke (a con man) performs Hamlet’s soliloquy on the raft for Huck, Jim, and the King (the other con man).  You may remember the Famous Shakespearian oration somewhat differently:

To be, or not to be;
that is the bare bodkinThat makes calamity of so long life;
For who would fardels bear,
till Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane,
But that the fear of something after death Murders the innocent sleep,
Great nature’s second course,
And makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune
Than fly to others that we know not of.

There’s the respect must give us pause:
Wake Duncan with thy knocking!
I would thou couldst;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong,
the proud man’s contumely,
The law’s delay,
and the quietus which his pangs might take,
In the dead waste and middle of the night,
when churchyards yawn
In customary suits of solemn black,
But that the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns,
Breathes forth contagion on the world,
And thus the native hue of resolution,
like the poor cat i’ the adage,
Is sicklied o’er with care,
And all the clouds that lowered o’er our housetops,
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.
But soft you, the fair Ophelia:
Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws,
But get thee to a nunnery–go!

Refresh your memory of the actual text.

The 19th Wife

Ever since I was willing to convert for Donny Osmond, the Mormon faith has had a hold on me.  Donny never called, so I never converted, but this didn’t hinder my interest in the Latter Day Saints.  The 19^th Wife by David Ebershoff focuses on the most fascinating (but very short) part of the Mormon church  – the polygamy.

The main story is about a young man, Jordan, who returns to a Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints community (the “Firsts”) after reading that his mother has been arrested for shooting her husband, his father.  Even as his 19th wife, she claims that she really loves her husband and swears that she didn’t do it.  Even though he had been literally thrown onto the street years ago, he belives her and wants to help her.  Throughout the story, Jordan temporarily gives up his life to solve this murder mystery.

Ann Eliza Young, coincidentally the 19^th Wife of Brigham Young who succeeded Joseph Smith, also tells her story in this novel.  Ann caused quite a commotion when she divorced Brigham in the 1890’s.  In addition to writing a book about life as a plural wife, she went on a national speaking tour to raise awareness with hopes that Congress would make polygomy illegal.

Alternating between Ann and Jordan’s narrative, we read chapters from many other characters – Ann’s sons, mother, brother, father and scholars from various time periods who are researching Ann.  Get the picture? While I admire Mr. Ebershhoff’s talent to write from many points of view, it took me a long time to figure out what was going on.  There didn’t seem to be much flow to the alternating stories and I always wondered what was fact and what was fiction.

A very important part of the book is in the back where Mr. Ebershoff explains the fact/fiction issue.  I should have read this first and I encourage any future readers to do the same.  Despite my confusion, I forged ahead and enjoyed The 19th Wife enough to conduct further research to get my facts straight about the history of the Latter Day Saints.

Booker Longlist

The longlist for the 2010 Booker Prize was announced today.  Behold:

• Peter Carey Parrot and Olivier in America
• Emma Donoghue Room *
• Helen Dunmore The Betrayal*
• Damon Galgut In a Strange Room
• Howard Jacobson The Finkler Question*
• Andrea Levy The Long Song
• Tom McCarthy C*
• David Mitchell The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
• Lisa Moore February
• Paul Murray Skippy Dies*
• Rose Tremain Trespass*
• Christos Tsiolkas The Slap
• Alan Warner The Stars in the Bright Sky*

Of the 13 titles nominated, just over half are not available in the US (*).  I’ve only read one title so far, an ARC of Skippy Dies .   I know that  The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet and Parrot and Olivier in America will appear soon in my “to be read” stack.  Anyone else read any of these yet?

Lord of the Flies

I’m certain that I read William Golding’s Lord of the Flies when I was younger, but not having any specific recollection of the details of the story (including the ending), I decided to re-read it.  And much like Jack London’s To Build a Fire, another story I had read when I was younger but couldn’t remember the details of, when I read this one again, all of the imagery was different from what I had remembered.  In both cases, even though I couldn’t recall specific elements, I had a vision in my mind of the respective settings, but when I read each of them again, the picture in my mind was completely different.  Maybe it’s just me, but that’s sort of strange.

But on to the details.  This is as intense a read as it gets.  First published in 1954, the book tells the story of a group of British schoolboys who are marooned on a deserted island without any adults.  As they try to sort out the roles and responsibilities necessary to sustain them and to maximize their chances of being rescued, they create the guiding principles for the society they create, but almost as quickly as they settle on their social contract and civil rules, their society begins to fracture and the boys begin to form alliances and devolve into a frighteningly primitive group of antagonistic factions.

A fair-haired boy named Ralph is the island’s first leader.  But as he and another boy named Jack begin to disagree over the group’s priorities, it becomes clear that a power struggle is sure to ensue.  Ralph works with Piggy, a fat, bespectacled boy, to try to govern the boys (including the “littluns”, the younger boys who cannot fend for themselves), while Jack and a group of the boys designated as “hunters” apparently make plans to govern themselves.  And the tension that builds between them and the ways in which it manifests itself are so wrought with suspense, fear, uncertainty, and confusion that the reader can’t help but be riveted to the turning pages.

The story itself is a metaphor that reflects human nature, good and evil, and the underpinnings of any human society.  But it is also filled with icons and imagery that serve to focus the reader on the fundamental nature of friendship, power, wealth/possession, adaptability, and the fragile nature of the human mind.  Piggy’s glasses, the “beast”, castle rock, the shelters the boys build, and the “lord of the flies” (the identity/description of which I won’t reveal here) each represent something that the reader is forced to define for him or herself.  And some of them represent things that are easily taken for granted until we are deprived of them.

This is a fantastic book.  While Golding’s writing style and word choice take a little getting used to, once you’re in, you can’t get out.

An aside: The NYT’s review of a new biography of Golding begins: “In the late 1960s, some 15 years after the publication of “Lord of the Flies,” William Golding confessed to a friend that he resented the novel because it meant that he owed his reputation to what he thought of as a minor book, a book that had made him a classic in his lifetime, which was “a joke,” and that the money he had gained from it was “Monopoly money” because he hadn’t really earned it.”

Freedom Flyers: The Podcast

Also while we were out of communication last week: my pal Todd Moye was busy recording a podcast about his book Freedom Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen of World War II over at New Books in History.  Check it out.

Travels

As you may have noticed, we’ve been on a summer schedule around here at BGB.  Travel and various mishaps* have slowed things down a bit, but we’re hoping to recover to our full blogging glory directly.  In the meantime, I’ll share some pictures from my visit to Seattle last week.

The Elliott Bay Book Company has been one of favorite indie book stores anywhere. However, they had moved from their former Pioneer Square location to the Capitol Hill neighborhood since I last visited.  I wasn’t sure how the new place would measure up.

The new digs are a little more vanilla on the outside, but the inside of the store is fantastic.   Old wooden flooring still creak underfoot, and the new place has fantastic natural lighting.  It seems even bigger than the old location.  The book selection is still top notch.  I spent my first twenty minutes browsing the first table inside the front door.  The store is also conveniently located near Sonic Boom Records, Molly Moon’s Ice Cream, the Elysian Brewery, Cupcake Royale, and dozens of bars/restaurants/coffee joints.  Make a day of it next time you’re in Seattle.

A quick ride on the #5 bus from downtown delivered me to the front door of the Greenwood Space Travel Supply Co, the 826 Seattle’s front operation. If you don’t know about the Dave Eggers founded 826 National reading/writing/tutoring centers – read all about it here.  I can only assume that dangerous cosmic rays emanating from within made this cellphone picture look so crappy.

Inside: wall-to-wall science geekery. If they served Pacific Northwest microbrews, it could be all-time favorite place. My purchases were entirely limited by what would fit inside my luggage.

(*Pro blogging tip: when traveling to the other side of the country try to remember your laptop’s charging cable.  Even though the hotel will have a large box of forgotten cables for you to choose from, they may not work well with your model.)

Huck and Jim Explore Language

I’m reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn DailyLit’s Big Summer Read — one e-mail at a time.  In the 63rd installment, the Duke performs Hamlet’s soliloquy:

…I went to talking about other kings, and let Solomon slide. I told about Louis Sixteenth that got his head cut off in France long time ago; and about his little boy the dolphin, that would a been a king, but they took and shut him up in jail, and some say he died there.

“Po’ little chap.”

“But some says he got out and got away, and come to America.”

“Dat’s good! But he’ll be pooty lonesome–dey ain’ no kings here, is dey, Huck?”

“No.”

“Den he cain’t git no situation. What he gwyne to do?”

“Well, I don’t know. Some of them gets on the police, and some of them learns people how to talk French.”

“Why, Huck, doan’ de French people talk de same way we does?”

“NO, Jim; you couldn’t understand a word they said–not a single word.”

“Well, now, I be ding-busted! How do dat come?”

“I don’t know; but it’s so. I got some of their jabber out of a book. S’pose a man was to come to you and say Polly-voo-franzy–what would you think?”

“I wouldn’ think nuff’n; I’d take en bust him over de head–dat is, if he warn’t white. I wouldn’t ‘low no nigger to call me dat.”

“Shucks, it ain’t calling you anything. It’s only saying, do you know how to talk French?”

“Well, den, why couldn’t he SAY it?”

“Why, he IS a-saying it. That’s a Frenchman’s WAY of saying it.”

“Well, it’s a blame ridicklous way, en I doan’ want to hear no mo’ ’bout it. Dey ain’ no sense in it.”

“Looky here, Jim; does a cat talk like we do?”

“No, a cat don’t.”

“Well, does a cow?”

“No, a cow don’t, nuther.”

“Does a cat talk like a cow, or a cow talk like a cat?”

“No, dey don’t.”

“It’s natural and right for ‘em to talk different from each other, ain’t it?”

“Course.”

“And ain’t it natural and right for a cat and a cow to talk different from US?”

“Why, mos’ sholy it is.”

“Well, then, why ain’t it natural and right for a FRENCHMAN to talk different from us? You answer me that.”

“Is a cat a man, Huck?”

“No.”

“Well, den, dey ain’t no sense in a cat talkin’ like a man. Is a cow a man?–er is a cow a cat?”

“No, she ain’t either of them.”

“Well, den, she ain’t got no business to talk like either one er the yuther of ‘em. Is a Frenchman a man?”

“Yes.”

“WELL, den! Dad blame it, why doan’ he TALK like a man? You answer me DAT!”

The Singer’s Gun

Although I haven’t read Emily St. John Mandel’s first book, Last Night in Montreal, it received rave reviews here on BGB, and I was excited to receive her second book The Singer’s Gun- I’m glad I moved it to the top of my stack.

The story begins with the end actually.  The death of two people.  Ms. Mandel takes us into the past and back to the present many times before we realize what really happened with these two people.

Main character Anton Waker’s family is full of criminals.  His parents steal antiques to resell in their store and see nothing wrong with it.  Even from an early age Anton isn’t comfortable with this way of life and when he asks his father if the goods are stolen, his dad justifies it:

“…sometimes regular channels aren’t open to you, and then you have to improvise.  Find your own way out…You have to make things happen for yourself.”

As an adult, Anton and his cousin Aria start their own business of selling social security cards and passports to illegal immigrants.  After 9/11, those uneasy feelings creep back:

“How would a terrorist get into the country?” [Alton asks his mother...]

“Well he’d come in on a tourist visa, I imagine.”

“Or he’d get a friend in the country to come to me and Aria and get him a passport, and then he’d enter as an American citizen.  Or if he were already here on his tourist visa, he’d buy a Social Security card directly from us and use it to get a job…..”

His father shrugged.

Anton has dreamed most of his life for an office job, so he quits the business with Aria and goes ‘legit’ by falsifying his Harvard credentials and landing a middle management position.  His father asks Anton what qualifies him for his job:

“Well, the same thing that qualified me to sell Social Security cards to illegal aliens, actually.  A certain veneer of confidence combined with sheer recklessness.”

When the company starts conducting background checks, Anton is in big trouble.  Although he isn’t fired, he is demoted to a basement office with no responsibilities while his ex-secretary is sent by the State Department to spy on him. Soon to be married, he figures he has nothing to loose by staying in the basement and collecting the paycheck.

Just prior to the wedding, Aria uses blackmail to convince Anton to help her “one last time”.  Coincidentally, this final transaction is to take place during the honeymoon on a remote Italian island.  As one can imagine, this “one last time” goes terribly wrong and we’re back to the “beginning” so to speak.

Ms. Mandel throughout the novel makes us think about crime – how much if any is ok?  Why is a little crime ok, but breaking the law on a daily basis isn’t?  What kind of person is someone like Anton that he “thinks” he is legitimate even though he has falsified his credentials to land a good job?   He is uncomfortable with helping Aria one last time, but he does it.  Is it really for the money?  Operating an illegal business doesn’t bother his parents or his cousin.

The Singer’s Gun is full of suspense and tension.  Despite moving back and forth through time, Ms. Mandel’s style flows – I was never confused.  I found myself wondering who would play each role in the movie version.  The twists and turns never let me down and I even enjoyed the dialog – I found a sick humor in all the madness.  I mean, who ARE these people?

I’m happy that my friend gave me The Singer’s Gun, but you shouldn’t wait for a friend, go read it on your own!

Friday Links

Submit your writing samples to I Write Like to find out what famous authors’ styles yours most resembles.  I’ve cut and pasted a half dozen blog posts and apparently I vacillate between Chuck Palahniuk, David Foster Wallace,  and P.G. Wodehouse depending upon my mood apparently.

Colons:  Their use is on the rise.

It was only a matter of time: Montessori Grad School.

The ultimate baseball book is 75 pounds and $3000.   Better put it on your Amazon wish list.

Wonder Woman responds to the Fox News suggestion that trading in her star-spangled panties for pants is somehow unpatriotic.

Sony is the first to break the sub-$100 e-reader barrier, if only briefly.

Have a suggestion for the publishing industry?  The Twitter hashtag #dearpublisher is the place to be heard.

The Old Spice Guy says a few words in support of libraries.

A new web site Writer’s Houses aims to be your one stop shop for everything you need to know about visiting the home’s of famous writers.

This trailer for Gary Shteyngart’s new book divides readers into two groups – those that say that they are going to run out and buy the book immediately and liars.

Burma Chronicles

I first heard of cartoonist Guy Delisle from what I remember as rave reviews of his previous book Pyongyang. I had every intention of picking that one up while visiting the Drawn & Quarterly bookstore, but it got put back on the shelf when I approached the register with more books than I could reasonably carry back home on an airplane.  I forgot about it until I came across DeLisle’s latest,  Burma Chronicles, which is what I ended up reading instead.  These kind of well-planned book acquisitions happen to me all the time.   Luckily, Burma Chronicles is every bit as good as I remember reading that Pyongyang was. If memory serves.

Delisle is an interesting guy.  He’s a professional cartoonist, which is interesting in of itself (to me).  His wife works for Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders).  Also an interesting gig.   When his wife is assigned to a new post in Asia, Delislse joins her as a stay at home dad for with their infant son.  In Burma Chronicles, Delisle has assembled a travelogue of an everyman’s daily life in the surreal and unique world of Burma.

Burma is officially known as Myanmar, but the U.S. and other countries refuse to acknowledge the name change since they don’t officially recognize the legitimacy of the government that changed the name.  Devout Buddhists and monks, military police, a diverse foreign community, and the “world’s most famous political prisoner” are within a short walk with a stroller of Delisle’s temporary home in Rangoon, which was the capital of Burma until the government inexplicably decided to suddenly move all  government operations out of the city to a new capital.

Delisle’s drawing style is deceptive.  It appears simple, yet somehow entirely conveys a sense of place and culture that always serves the story being told.  It shows remarkable restraint.  Similarly, the stories conveyed are often simple one or two page vignettes of various scenes encountered over his stay in Burma.  However, they manage to convey a rich picture of a difficult to understand country when taken together as a whole. I learned quite a bit about a country I knew very little about.  Burma Chronicles is an entertaining read and worth your time.  Like Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, Burma Chonicles is a perfect “gateway comic” for people who don’t read comics.

Pap as Proto-Tea Partier

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is DailyLit’s Summer Big Read.  Since I have a son named Finn, it seemed an opportune time to re-read the classic.  In 135 easy installments. Via e-mail.  This is not my preferred reading style.  Anyway…I’m still re-reading (only 30 e-mails in), but there was a passage that really grabbed me (from Section 13) that I felt the need to share.

Huck’s pap, a model father as you may remember, takes a dim view of the government for trespassing all over on his liberties.  A few notes before treading the quote below: the property/money that Pap is referring to as “his” is actually Huck’s (proceeds from the gold Tom and Huck found in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer) and my, that Pap sure was liberal with the N word.  The asterisks are mine and not Pap’s.

I got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark. While I was cooking supper the old man took a swig or two and got sort of warmed up, and went to ripping again. He had been drunk over in town, and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at. A body would a thought he was Adam–he was just all mud. Whenever his liquor begun to work he most always went for the govment, this time he says:

“Call this a govment! why, just look at it and see what it’s like. Here’s the law a-standing ready to take a man’s son away from him–a man’s own son, which he has had all the trouble and all the anxiety and all the expense of raising. Yes, just as that man has got that son raised at last, and ready to go to work and begin to do suthin’ for HIM and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him. And they call THAT govment! That ain’t all, nuther. The law backs that old Judge Thatcher up and helps him to keep me out o’ my property. Here’s what the law does: The law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and up’ards, and jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this, and lets him go round in clothes that ain’t fitten for a hog. They call that govment! A man can’t get his rights in a govment like this. Sometimes I’ve a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all. Yes, and I TOLD ‘em so; I told old Thatcher so to his face.

Lots of ‘em heard me, and can tell what I said. Says I, for two cents I’d leave the blamed country and never come a-near it agin. Them’s the very words. I says look at my hat–if you call it a hat–but the lid raises up and the rest of it goes down till it’s below my chin, and then it ain’t rightly a hat at all, but more like my head was shoved up through a jint o’ stove-pipe. Look at it, says I –such a hat for me to wear–one of the wealthiest men in this town if I could git my rights.

“Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here. There was a free n***** there from Ohio–a mulatter, most as white as a white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the shiniest hat; and there ain’t a man in that town that’s got as fine clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a silver-headed cane–the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State. And what do you think? They said he was a p’fessor in a college, and could talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain’t the wust. They said he could VOTE when he was at home. Well, that let me out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was ‘lection day, and I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn’t too drunk to get there; but when they told me there was a State in this country where they’d let that n***** vote, I drawed out. I says I’ll never vote agin.

Them’s the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may rot for all me –I’ll never vote agin as long as I live. And to see the cool way of that n*****–why, he wouldn’t a give me the road if I hadn’t shoved him out o’ the way. I says to the people, why ain’t this n***** put up at auction and sold?–that’s what I want to know. And what do you reckon they said? Why, they said he couldn’t be sold till he’d been in the State six months, and he hadn’t been there that long yet. There, now–that’s a specimen. They call that a govment that can’t sell a free n***** till he’s been in the State six months. Here’s a govment that calls itself a govment, and lets on to be a govment, and thinks it is a govment, and yet’s got to set stock-still for six whole months before it can take a hold of a prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted free n*****, and–”

And then Pap falls over the tub of salt pork. Which was probably the government’s fault, too.

Ben Franklin

Once again digging into material that many of you probably read long ago, I decided to read The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, since it cost a pittance on my handy new Nook.  Two quick points: (1) I loved this book, and (2) I blame my Nook for the brevity of this review.  I shall address each of these in more detail.

Having been born and raised in the U.S., I’ve certainly heard Ben Franklin’s name bantered about and therefore thought I knew as much about him as the next guy.  Well, a quick read through this short work proved that point to be utterly wrong.  As much as I thought I knew about how Franklin was an important historical figure in the history of this nation’s politics and diplomacy, the depth to which he was also quite the inventor, philosopher, and humorist (not to mention that he was apparently a highly-skilled printer — a trade that in modern times it might be easy to dismiss) was eye-opening to say the least.

Reading his recollections of traveling from Boston to Philadelphia reminds the reader of how difficult it was in those times to accomplish things that today seem trivial.  There were no guarantees on such journeys as to when you would leave, when you would arrive, or even if there would be enough food for everyone on the trip.  Yet old Ben didn’t seem to fret about those things.  Perhaps this was the case because his autobiography was written years later, when he knew in hindsight that everything would work out just fine; regardless, the way he recounts his trials and tribulations during the period when he was trying to find a vocation and establish himself makes clear to you that he was a special person, not just in how he did these things, but in how he tells about it.

He was a hard worker in his youth, both physically and mentally.  Without any requirement to do so (such as school), he spent every waking moment either working or engaged in self-study, trying to better himself mentally and psychologically.  And this hard work paid off, in ways that we continue to reap the benefits of to this day.

Now to point #2 above.  I had used the “highlight” function on my Nook to track bushels of mind-blowing quotes and anecdotes that I intended to share as part of this review.  Unfortunately, I’ve now learned that one of the issues with the Nook is that you can lose all of these highlights during a firmware upgrade of the device.  And I did.  And I’m too frustrated to go back and try to find all of those wonderful nuggets.  The Nook’s overall ledger is still on the positive side, but any more of that nonsense and I’m going to have to have a nice little talk with it.

But don’t let that dissuade you from reading this book if you haven’t already, or from re-reading it if you read it long ago.  Fascinating account of a fascinating individual.

A Shout-Out for Audio Books

I listen to almost as many books as I read.  I haven’t seen much about audio books on BGB, so I thought a “shout out” was in order – to include some of my favorites, of course.

I have just finished listening to The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson (one of the top 25 books all Georgians should read and like Ms. Jackson’s other novel that she narrates, Between Georgia, it was a great “listen.”  Ms. Jackson’s southern twang is perfect for all of the animated characters in her novels and there is no doubt about interpretation.  Having read so many books about poor black people in the south, it is quite uplifting to experience Ms. Jackson’s stories involving poor white people in the south!  Ms. Jackson’s comical characters make me chuckle long after having finished listening.  Whether they are older sisters who have lived together and never married to an actress married to a gay man, Ms. Jackson brings her characters to life.  In addition, Ms. Jackson herself is very cool, she has attended a couple book club meetings of a friend of mine here in Atlanta.

I have never actually read a single book by Michael Connelly but I know for a fact that listening to his books involving main character Horacio Bosch has prevented me from exploding into road rage as I sit in eight lanes of bumper to bumper traffic. Mr. Connelly was a reporter for the crime beat section of the L.A. Times and writes some very entertaining police murder mysteries.  Fortunately, the voice of Bosch has only had a couple different narrators which makes the books more addicting.

That said, the narrators can make or break a novel. I listened to 11 cds of On Beauty by Zadie Smith and am still confused by the actual plot, but who cares?  The narrator had such a sexy voice I couldn’t stop listening.

A few other novels, however, stand out as being original and captivating stories, combined with the perfect narrator. Amy Tan reads parts or all of her books. In fact, The Kitchen God’s Wife was my very first audio book back in the early 90′s.  Similar to Shanghai Girls that I reviewed here, Ms. Tan’s Asian-American voice transports me directly into every single one of her stories.

I have listened to all of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novels and although he is probably best known for Remains of the Day, his novel Never Let Me Go was so disturbingly addicting that I still think about it.  This story is about people who are cloned to be organ donors for “real” people and it comes as a surprise to many of the administrators that the donors have feelings just like their soon to be hosts.    The soft spoken English woman is an ideal choice as the narrator for this haunting novel.

One other novel I still think about often is The Blood of Flowers by Anita Amirrezvhani .  The storyline of ancient Persian royalty and a poor girl who become a carpet maker for the king combined with an Iranian-American narrator blew me away.  The Persian language is very melodic and the narrator sings through this novel.  I am going to read The Blood of Flowers and write a more detailed review soon.

Anyone else out there have an opinion about audio books?  A favorite you’ve listened to? If you have a horrible commute or can’t read on the bus, it would be worthwhile to investigate the audio book.  You can even check them out from the library!