Metro Marginalia: a blog of books

Review: Feed, Mira Grant's Foray Into Zombies

2011-06-06T16:29:00.000-04:00

It's summer, which means it's time for reading a little bit lighter fare than usual, correct? It was with this in mind that I picked up Mira Grant's zombie-thriller Feed a while ago. The book had everything I want in a summer read, it looked like a quick read, it had zombies, and it was well-reviewed. In fact, the book was nominated for the prestigious Hugo Award, given annually for the best science fiction/fantasy book. Feed looked trashy and interesting, so how could I say no?

Well, I'm glad I didn't. The book in set in 2039-40 and follows two bloggers, Shaun and Georgia Mason as they cover a presidential campaign. And there are zombies. The backstory here is that a hybrid virus (called Kellis-Amberlee) formed when two separate cures (for cancer and the common cold) combined in 2014. Now, the world has no more stuffy sinuses, and tobacco is big again (why not, without cancer?). However, when the two combined, they formed a virus that lives only to reproduce, and it reanimates the dead. By the time of the book, everyone has the virus in them, it's just that most people have it in the dormant state. Death or exposure to the live virus are enough to trigger an outbreak.

I don't want to go into too much detail here, because Grant (a pen-name for Seanan Maguire) did a lot of research in epidemiology to get this story right, and it's worth reading her take on the spread of Kellis-Amberlee. What I find really interesting here is the speculative view of the future, one in which bloggers provide most of the world's news. Georgia and Shaun get selected to tag along on a presidential campaign and begin to write for what will become one of the most important blogs of them all. Of course, no zombie novel would be complete without a lot of the walking dead, and we are treated to plenty in Feed.

But what really fascinates me about this book is the cognitive dissonance it caused me. On one hand, the writing here is often incredibly stilted. I can't even begin to tell you how many times we are told that Shaun likes to poke dead things with sticks. Or all about Georgia's (our narrator) virus-caused ocular disability (her eyes are always dilated). At times it's maddening, and there are passages that make me think of this tumblr.

And yet, I couldn't put it down. The story was able to overcome choppy writing, and it was riveting. There are times in which the book is just heartbreaking, and there are moments of great humor. Overall, it comes across as an interesting critique of the role of the press in society, all without being preachy. In short, it's a fun book that is able to push beyond its own flaws. Feed is the first book of the (cringe-inducing name approaching) Newsflesh trilogy. The second (Deadline... god, the puns) was released this May, and is now in my wish list. Feed isn't the best thing you'll read this summer, but it's good. And it has a weird way of sticking with you. That, mixed with the fact that it's a fast read make it the ideal book for these hot months.

Review: A King of Infinite Space

2011-01-29T10:00:00.001-05:00

So I found this book on sale the other day for the Kindle. I also picked up Mercury Falls and Russell Wiley is Out to Lunch, but I doubt either of those will be quite as good. While the latter two are comedies or more light-hearted, A King of Infinite Space is a tense detective tale. It's a bit noir, but completely compelling and hard to put down.

Tyler Dilts writes the story of detective Danny Beckett and his partner Jen Tanaka. Beckett is a hardened homicide detective who is still struggling with the loss of his wife a couple of years earlier. They are part of a team investigating the brutal murder of a beloved young high school English teacher.

This is one of the first mysteries I've read in ages. At least it's one of the first that I've really enjoyed. Maybe as far back as the Boxcar Kids books. But what Dilts does in this book is create a world of stunning detail without being annoying. It's a bit of a procedural crime drama, but not in a bad way.

We're launched into the world of Beckett and Tanaka with the murder of the teacher, and from there we get to follow the full investigation. But as interesting as the murder plot-line is, what's even more fascinating is watching Beckett struggle with the investigation. It turns out he knows the victim, and dealing with the entire process brings up remembrances of his wife and her untimely death. There's drama on every page, but none is better than that in Beckett's mind.

It's really a fast read, and there's no reason not to get it. If you have a Kindle, it's dirt-cheap, and if you don't it's still less than $10.

As a side note, the book is part of the AmazonEncore program. It's a great idea of Amazon's; they find books that haven't sold very well but which get outstanding ratings on their site. Then, they agree to publish those books again and lead a marketing campaign for them. The first two books in the program that I've read (Mercury Falls and this one) were both great, and the third (Russell Wiley is Out to Lunch) is looking good as well. Be sure to check out their page, as you might find something great.

Review: Mercury Falls

2011-01-27T21:52:00.000-05:00

The world is ending. Or, at the very least, it's about to if Christine and her new-found friend Mercury can't stop it. Christine is a reporter for Christian newspaper, and Mercury is an avid enthusiast of ping-pong. Oh yeah, he's an angel as well.

Mercury Falls is the tale of Armageddon averted. It is nearly the time when the four attache cases (not horsemen) of the Apocalypse will be released and a great battle between the forces of God and Satan shall do battle. The only thing holding up the end of the world is a bit of bureaucracy. Robert Kroese paints a picture of an angelic world so caught up in red tape that they can't even figure out who is supposed to be the Antichrist. If you're a fan of dry humor and irreverence, you'll love this book.

An example of what's in store for you. Here, two angels discuss the attempt to find the Antichrist in the "Mundane Plane" or, as we know it, Earth.

"...They can't try to pull a designated hitter on us."
"A what?"
"A designated hitter," said Izbazel a bit condescendingly. "You don't follow Mundane baseball?"
"Not much of a sports fan," said Gamaliel.
"In the American League, you can designate an alternate hitter if your pitcher can't hit the ball."
"Isn't the idea of baseball that everybody on the team has to hit? It seems like that rule kind of goes against the spirit of the game."
"One of Lucifer's more ingenious ideas," Izbazel mused in a thoughtful tone.

Blaming everyday things on Satan? I love it. It's a bit in the spirit of Joseph Heller's God Knows. Really, I'm not quite sure how to sum this book up. It's a wild ride, and at times a bit confusing (Mercury is a double/triple/quadruple something or other agent. It's not a spoiler because I promise it'll still confuse you a bit). But overall, it was really enjoyable. I seem to have hit a streak of superb books lately, and I really hope it continues.

Review: Macklemore The VS EP (Not a book)

2011-01-21T16:29:00.000-05:00

Usually you can expect to find book reviews here at Metro Marginalia, but I think I'm going to open things up a bit every now and again. And right now, I've got some music that I'm dying to talk about.

Macklemore, a rapper out of Seattle, first came to my attention with this post on my favorite baseball blog. It's his tribute to one of my favorite people ever, the voice of the Seattle Mariners, Dave Niehaus. The announcer passed away a few months ago, and to say it shocked me and others is an understatement. When I thought about it, Niehaus has to be one of the five or so voices I've heard most in my life, and he was really the voice of growing up for me. There was nothing better than turning on a Mariners game and getting to hear Dave spin a story.

Well, Macklemore and his producer Ryan Lewis got around to releasing the video for "My Oh My." And it's amazing. Take a look for yourself.

And if that was all Macklemore had ever done, I'd think of him pretty fondly. It's an amazing tribute to an amazing man. But, a cousin of mine was raving about the rapper over Christmas, so I decided to delve a bit more deeply. After all, it'd be pretty great to discover a good rapper from Seattle.

I found out you could download a free copy of his The VS EP on his myspace page (scroll down just a bit, it's the second thing on the far right side). I gave it two full listens today, and I highly recommend the thing. All of the tracks are pretty darn cool, but a couple really stand out in my mind.

"Crew Cuts" is a tribute to growing up in the 1980s, and begins with a driving guitar riff, that pulses throughout the whole song. After Xperience drops his first verse, Macklemore chimes in with some humorous talk about how street he was... when he was younger than 10. It's some pretty amusing stuff, but Ryan Lewis's production really shines here. At the end of the track, some excellent scratching accompanies the guitar riff decaying into an overdriven power-chord line. The scratching really adds something, and it's great to hear that style used effectively.

"Life is Cinema" relies on another overdriven sounding riff. This time, the disco style bass line fuels a relentless drive throughout the song. When it drops out, you can't help but want it to come back in. Using some samples from the "I've got soul..." chorus in The Killers "All These Things That I've Done," Lewis makes what seems like a sick bridge, but actually turns into an extended outro. Macklemore doesn't always have the best flow, but on this track his rapping really shines.

Like many other rappers, Macklemore struggled with alcohol and drug abuse in his career. For a known quantity like Lil Wayne, this is something that can be overcome. The label is willing to put up with shenanigans, so long as the artist keeps selling. Is it wise for an artist to screw themselves up because they can? Not at all. But it's even worse if you're an unsigned musician, as Macklemore is. He attributes alcohol abuse to a prolonged period of unproductivity, but has now been sober for over two years.

"Otherside," the emotional peak of The VS EP, is Macklemore's PSA for living a life on the straight and narrow. He raps over a Red Hot Chili Peppers' sample, and identifies with people using "Drank" or "Syrup" and other drugs. What's really interesting he is his ability to say "Yeah, I understand why you like it, but here's why you shouldn't." I wonder if the "voice of experience" angle will be enough to dissuade others from starting to use the things that derail so many careers. If ever there was a chance, this track is it. I've never used any of these things, but the track was absurdly powerful nevertheless.

I have to give some props to "Irish Celebration" for using a sample from Beirut's "Scenic World." Beirut is one of my favorite band's in the world, and hearing a sample of their music in a rap song instantly made me smile. Macklemore's song is a bit tough to identify with, as I'm not Irish, but the lines "We put our glass to the sky and lift up, and live tonight because ya can't take it with ya. So raise a pint for the people that aren't with us, and live tonight because ya can't take it with ya" are pretty fantastic regardless of heritage.

Appropriately, the album closes with "The End." Here we get Macklemore proving his slow jam chops. It's a pretty gorgeous number, and I can't get over one haunting line:

Don't you love music? It's such gift and I'll give it to ya.

That's a hell of a motto.

Now, the album is far from flawless. Like I mentioned, Macklemore can trip over his tongue every now and again, but it's not crippling. And Ryan Lewis has produced this album phenomenally. I love the beats, I love the samples (he uses the string line from "Empire State of Mind" at one point, and makes it amazing by totally thwarting your expectations of where it'll go), and the way he can break some things down shows promise. But throughout the album, I wish he had played with the levels a bit. I often get the feeling that beats are coming from a bottle, or are too tight somehow. You never get the feeling that things open up. He crafts some brutal (in a good way) beats, and they never really get to breathe.

But overall? It's one of the better albums I've listened to in a while. It's no My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, but what is? There's something intimate about this album, and yeah, I'm prejudiced in it's favor. I want to see a successful Seattle rapper. And if it's the guy who can do such a good job memorializing Dave Niehaus, even better. But The VS EP is very much worth checking out. Don't let the fact that he's pretty unknown outside of Seattle stop you. I promise you won't regret the time spent with it.

Review: Sideways

2011-01-15T16:30:00.000-05:00

So Sideways was one of the books I had on my Christmas list this year. I'd seen the movie and wanted to find out if the book compared well. And honestly, I can't remember the last time I was so conflicted by a book. Rex Pickett's writing is terrible, but the story was awfully compelling. I gave it three stars on Goodreads, but I could have easily gone up or down one star depending on what I was really rating.

Let's start off with the bad. This here is the first line of the novel:

The sun poured bright parallelograms of mote-swirling light through the venetian blinds of my rundown, rent-controlled house in Santa Monica.

How many superfluous adjectives can you spot? Ok, whatever. Maybe he just really wants to set the scene. Well, here's how chapter two begins:

The morning dawned bright blue, sunlight slanting harshly through my mother's diaphanous drapery, rousing me early.

Alright, one overly adjective-ized description of sun through blinds is OK, I suppose. Two chapters in a row? Not cool. It's just too memorable of a thing to go back to. Using exceptionally descriptive phrases is great, but you can't overdo it. I remember, while writing my thesis, there were a few words my advisor told me I was using too often. It generally went like this, "That's a great word, but using it more than a few times in a paper gets repetitive." And she was right! Good words stick in the reader's mind, so you have to be very careful in their use. But perhaps this was just a lapse. Nope. Chapter four opens with:

Sunlight broke in colored prisms as if shafting through stained glass windows.

ARGH! Stop it with how the morning sun appeared, already! Throughout Sideways, Pickett's writing is heavy-handed in the extreme. Maybe it comes from his background as a screenwriter, where the details can really help a director. But the style doesn't work in a novel. That's not to say the book is all bad though. Despite the writing, I found myself breezing through the book, eager to see what happens to Miles and his soon-to-be-married buddy Jack. Their floundering and burgeoning affairs with Maya and Terra, respectively, were fascinating. Miles being sucked into a crippling well of depression, and Jack nearly throwing away his impending nuptials.

It's hardly the best book ever, but you could certainly do worse. If nothing else, Sideways will give you quite the thirst for wine. The backdrop for the entire story is a wine-tasting trip that Miles and Jack are taking in the Santa Ynez Valley. The descriptions of wine aren't always amazing, but they did have me always wanting to grab a glass. This was a bit of a problem, since I read this book almost exclusively before going to bed each night.

I doubt anyone would regret reading Sideways, but it's not a book you'll need to rush out and get. If you see it in your library or somewhere cheap, grab it. Otherwise, I wouldn't bother.

Welcome Back My Friends!

2011-01-12T12:51:00.000-05:00

Well, I've been being hassled by V for a bit to start this whole shindig up again. I haven't neglected the site because I haven't been reading, but rather because I've been writing elsewhere, and it's taken up a ton of my time. But then V pointed out last night that it really hasn't taken up too much time. "You know, it doesn't take that long to write a blog post." And she's right.

So here I am again, after nearly 8 months. And let's just dive right in with a book review, shall we? Recently, I read about the upcoming HBO series A Game Of Thrones. That piqued my interest, but not for the show. Instead, I wanted to read the book. Before I get to anything else, let me say "thank heavens for the Kindle."

The book, in all its 800+ page glory, would have been a pain to lug around. But since I could get it for <$10 and not have a tome with me at all times I dove in. Now, it's been ages since I've read any fantasy. In middle school I got into the Robert Jordan series for a bit, but it seemed to never go anywhere. Aside from that, it's pretty much been Lord of The Rings, and that's it. But every so often, my inner nerd wants to read something like this.

I certainly picked a good book to dive back in with. Martin's opener in the quintilogy (is that a word?) is your typical sprawling fantasy epic, with a cast of characters that would make Wagner proud. It details the tensions between the Starks and the Lannisters, two houses who now swear fealty to King Robert (I liked that bit) after having usurped the previous monarch. When Robert dies, the southern Lannisters take exception to the northern Starks and war breaks out. And this is all set on an island nation (Starks? Lannisters? Island? War of the Roses, anyone?) in which the seasons last for years at a time. Summer is good, and winter is harrowing.

What comes with winter though is said to be more terrible than anything that the Starks and Lannisters can cook up. In the North, beyond The Wall (Scotland? Hadrian's Wall? Anybody with me on this?), live otherworldly creatures that are terrifying beyond belief. They include the reanimated dead. Oh, and did I mention that the last heir of the previously disposed king is busy hatching dragons in Europ... I mean the land across the sea? Yeah, it's a bundle of fun.

But despite my pithy remarks, I absolutely loved this book. Sure, some of it feels a bit heavy-handed at times, but you always get the feel that there is a history behind what you're reading. The level of detail is stellar, and the book never falls back on magic as a deus ex machina. Instead, magic is something that plays merely a supporting role throughout. I've already picked up the second book, though I'm taking a break before I dive in. It's more than 1,000 pages! Anyhow, I'd highly recommend A Game of Thrones, I doubt you'll regret the time spent. It's a fast read (for its size), and thoroughly engrossing.

Review: Death in Venice

2010-05-25T15:25:00.000-04:00

Well if a book has ever left me with a deep ennui, this was it. I started off hating it, and by the end, I just didn't even care a little. I read it because I plan on studying Benjamin Britten, and he wrote an opera based on the story. Death In Venice is one of German writer Thomas Mann's most famous works, and it's so universally praised that I feel a bit weird for disliking it.

But I just can't get over how unrelentingly creepy it is. Aschenbach, the main character, is a famed, middle-aged, German writer in the pre-WWI 1910s. He feels a deep malaise for his work and decides to go on a trip. He ends up in Venice as Cholera begins to spread in the city. There, he falls madly in love with a 14-year old boy, Tadzio.

Now, Tadzio is apparently beautiful. But that's what you would expect of a thinly veiled metaphor for Apollo. Of course the sun/light/truth god is beautiful, this isn't Hephaestus. So we get to see Tadzi-apoll-o running about the shore and making Aschenbach's day. Sure, Aschenbach never does anything, but he lusts over the boy like a dog looking at a T-Bone. (Also, allow me to clarify that the age is what I have a problem with here, not the fact that both are male).

Thankfully, we're spared Aschenbach's continued awkward creepiness by his untimely death (spoiler alert). It was incredibly abrupt and felt like it came out of nowhere. I'd've been upset if it hadn't felt so merciful.

That said, I did manage to get one awesome line out of the book (one that I think I will use for conference papers when I turn my thesis into them):

But in empty, unarticulated space our mind loses its sense of time as well, and we enter the twilight of the immeasurable.

Review: The Unnamed

2010-05-20T10:00:00.000-04:00

Joshua Ferris completely hooked me with his first book, Then We Came to the End. It was an almost Heller-esque portrayal of office-life. Well, if you know me, "Heller-esque" is about the best characteristic I can think of in a book: the portrayal of both the banal and phenomenal in an absurd light makes for great reading.

So I eagerly anticipated his second offering. Released in January of this year, and titled The Unnamed, V and I picked up a copy at Borders a little later. I've just finally gotten around to reading it, and it was worth the wait. (She did read it before I did, and you can find her review here). It is the tale of Tim Farnsworth, a man with an unnamed disease. You see, Tim goes for walks. But not like those that you or I take, rather these are walks that come upon him suddenly and which he cannot control. His body forces him to walk and the only thing it does otherwise is avoid danger (somehow). After countless doctors and innumerable attempts to figure out what is wrong (is it psychological or physiological?), Tim and his wife have pretty much given up hope of ever ending it.

But the "disease" does go into remission, and during those periods, they're able to live a peaceful life with their daughter. Tim is a partner at a powerful law firm in New York City, and he's got a client that he needs to get off the hook for murder. As the case is readying to begin though, the disease comes back.

Now it doesn't seem like walking would be such a problem. We all do it, after all. But Tim walks to the point of exhaustion, and then falls asleep wherever his body needs to. He doesn't always know where he is, and her certainly can't control when it begins. So he has to keep a backpack with necessities in it with him at all times. And in the winter, he needs appropriate clothes.

The story is really well written, and the best parts are those in which we see the cracks in the relationship between Tim and his wife. There's an obvious and deep love, but the strain the disease puts on both of them is extreme. The thing I've noticed about Ferris is that I don't always love his plots, but he excels at writing about interpersonal relationships so well that I can overlook that. The books are character studies, and the plots are merely instruments to manipulate and expose that character.

It's definitely worth a read, and you'll be thinking about it for days. And if you haven't read Ferris's first book, grab that one too. It's probably the better of the two, but that doesn't mean you should skip The Unnamed, even if you have to walk to the bookstore to get it.

Review: Are We Winning?

2010-05-11T10:22:00.000-04:00

Anyone who has read what I write here knows that I love baseball. It is, without question, the greatest sport ever put on this planet, and one of my absolute favorite ways to spend a few hours. So despite the fact that I was not smitten with his last work (God Save The Fan, essentially a collection of long-winded Deadspin essays), I couldn't wait to get my hands on Will Leitch's new book, Are We Winning? Fathers and Sons in the New Golden Age of Baseball.

Leitch is at his best when he writes about baseball. He's got a way with words that incorporates the modern view of the game with the romanticized purple prose of bygone years. It's easy to understand why: he grew up idolizing newspaper legends and went to the University of Illinois with the explicit purpose of becoming one of them. His two passions have been movies and sports, and it is in the field of sports that he truly shines.

Leitch grew up as a Cardinals fan, and he's been able to avoid any wavering from that, thanks in large part to his father. The elder Leitch gave his son sage advice when he left for college: "There's going to be a lot of Chicago people up there, and a lot of Cubs fans. You can fool around with a Cubs fan if you want, but don't you dare bring one home." Are We Winning? is primarily a book about the relationship of Will and Bryan Leitch, and how that has been built around baseball. Bryan Leitch seems like an amazing guy, but he also seems like the stock character father from the Midwest: stoic, hard-working, hard-drinking, and with charisma that bubbles over, allowing him to make friends with anyone anywhere (as with a man at Wrigley wearing a Cubs shirt and a Cardinals hat [makes me sick to my stomach to hear about that]).

The best parts of the book are unquestionably those that deal with the father-son dynamic. Leitch manages to make his stock-character father seem like something more than that. He could have easily left his father with the stereotypical traits and had a fine story, but instead he delves even further and allows the reader to see past the clip-art version of a Midwesterner.

Other parts of the book seem to lag just a little, but probably only because of their juxtaposition with the father-son bits. Are We Winning? is organized into the half-innings of a game that Leitch and his dad attended at Wrigley in 2008. The two die-hard Cardinals fans unwittingly ended up at the game where the Cubs are given the chance to clinch the NL Central against the Cardinals, while Tony LaRussa's squad floundered just out of reach of playoff contention. In each half-inning Leitch weaves general baseball stories with play-by-play of the game and the bits of the father-son relationship.

The general thesis of the baseball stories seems to be, as implied in the subtitle, that baseball is better now than it has ever been. This flies in the face of many baseball old-timers, who see the sport as constantly leaving its better days behind. But Leitch is able to offer a convincing argument: more people watch baseball now than have ever done so before, they are able to access more and better information than before, and the players are better than they ever have been. He's right on all three counts. The athleticism of even the worst baseball players (read: Yuniesky Betancourt) is better today than ever before, and it's led to better baseball. And with MLB.tv and other advances from MLB Advanced Media as well as innumerable blogs and other websites dedicated to baseball, we're more able to access information about this better game. I'm able to follow the Seattle Mariners while living in Washington, DC, and I'm actually able to do so better than I did when I lived in Washington state 6 years ago. That is incredible.

But what happens in the book is that these baseball stories get overshadowed by how incredibly good Leitch's writing about his father is. I love reading random bits about baseball, especially when they're written by Will Leitch. But here, I wanted to read even more about his dad. Maybe this is just the desire for a deeper connection with a parent over baseball. My dad never cared about baseball too much (always supported my little league playing, and went to Mariners games with me, but hates them for being "crybaby millionaires"), and though my mom coached my little league team and always let me watch the Mariners, she hardly follows them any more (she told me the other day "I really only know two guys on this year's team: Griffey and Ichiro." She didn't know Felix Henandez, one of the top-3 pitchers in the American League. See what I mean?). I'd love to have a baseball connection with a parent like Leitch does, and I think that's what made his stories so compelling, and what made the purely baseball anecdotes so anticlimactic.

That said, I can't recommend this book enough. It has some flaws (Leitch periodically reintroduces anecdotes throughout the book that he has already used before several times, and always treats them as new. This really annoyed me for some reason.), but they don't end up doing any major damage to the book. It's a quick read, and one that I'll probably come back to at some point. Why? Because even with its problems, baseball is still the best thing around. Like Leitch says, "We expect baseball to be perfect, all the time. And it is perfect. But it is run by human beings, who are far from perfect, who are not even close." No matter what those human beings do, they can't change the fact that baseball is perfect. Thanks, Will, for reminding why I love this game so damn much.

Review: I, Lucifer

2010-05-04T12:01:00.001-04:00

We've got a long tradition of stories involving the devil from a slightly more humanized view than what the bible gives us. Certainly, many of them still paint him to be evil, but they create a true character. Faust comes to mind, as does the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil." Blues musician Robert Johnson was thought to have sold his soul at the crossroads for his ability to play guitar, and who can forget Johnny betting that he can play the fiddle better than Satan? (And of course, Tenacious D met some sort of devil, but banished him with the Greatest Song in the World)

All the music references are the slow way of getting to the topic of today, Glen Duncan's I, Lucifer: Finally, the Other Side of the Story. The book was recommended to me by Jessica Abbazio, a fellow grad student who was working on a paper about the personification of the devil in the Stones' song. Her paper was fascinating, as was the book she sent my way.

The basic premise here: God is giving Lucifer another chance. Lucifer, who only exists in a spiritual realm (and can't even see what we see, but rather the impacts of his doings on our souls), doesn't buy it, but the setup is too good to pass on. He is to inhabit the body of a failing writer, Declan Gunn (took me half the book to figure out it was an anagram for the author), who was about to commit suicide when God snatched his soul away. The upside for Lucifer is that he gets a one-month trial run in the city of London. If he wants to give it a go, he stays in the body and tries to live a good life. If not, he can return to being Lucifer.

What follows is a month of debauchery, where the devil wrecks Gunn's body. He takes drugs, drinks, has promiscuous sex (with the ladies of the XXX-quisite escort service), cheats on Gunn's girlfriend, cheats on his mistresses. He's, pretty much, a little devil. The problem for Lucifer is that he starts to reconsider: should he stay in the body and take his one shot at eternal redemption?

The conceit behind the book is great, and Gunn (whoops, Duncan) pulls it off marvelously. I can't say too much, as the reader is left constantly wondering which way Lucifer chooses. But it's certainly worth a read, and it's definitely quick. If you hadn't had the chance, pick up a copy. I'm sure it can be had for less than a soul.

The Week Ahead

2010-05-03T21:21:00.000-04:00

So I've got a fair amount of nearly-finished, just-finished, and soon-to-be-begun books in store for the week. The nearly finished (not page-wise, but time-wise) is Chuck Klosterman's IV. It's pretty good thus far. I might try and break my responses to it up into little mini posts in reaction to individual essays. More reason to come back!

Yesterday I finished Duncan Glen's I, Lucifer. It had me completely in its grips, and you'll read about that at some point. Finally, I pre-ordered Will Leitch's new book Are We Winning?: Fathers and Sons in the New Golden Age of Baseball. If you read yesterday's Sunday Book Banter, you know how I feel about the Romanticism of baseball, and a book about fathers, sons, and the baseball bond certainly qualifies. The Kindle version seems to have been taken down (that's what I ordered), but Leitch assures me that any problems there will be worked out soon. In theory, it should come tonight while I sleep!

Should be a fun week. I may put up some first impressions of the essays I've read in the new collection of Britten scholarship. In short: the ones I didn't care about turned out to be ok, and the one that I really cared about was really atrocious.

So be sure to come back this week. There's plenty in store!

Sunday Book Banter: May 2, 2010

2010-05-02T13:15:00.000-04:00

As promised here is the return of Sunday Book Banter. I swear I'm going to be a better blogger...

In today's Washington Post, we get a review of former MLB-er Doug Glanville's new baseball memoir, The Game From Where I Stand. Glanville never really made it onto my radar of players I cared about, but the new book sounds like it could be a fun (and probably quick) read. Dave Sheinin writes:

Glanville, who contributes a column to the New York Times, is a witty, insightful writer, and his detailed descriptions of the unseen banalities and secret vanities of the baseball life -- how players pass the time during rain delays, the proper way to pack an equipment bag after you've been cut, the admission that players practice signing their autograph -- are sometimes riveting and often amusing, even for those of us already intimately familiar with that life.

Sheinin, I should note, wrote one of the better baseball stories I've read in a while for last Sunday's Post; a great write-up on Stephen Strasburg's first weeks in professional baseball. If you haven't had the chance to read it, do so, it's got a certain poetry to it. (I kind of love the old-school Romanticism of baseball, and Sheinin does a great job of bringing that back).

Back to the book at hand, apparently it isn't too big on naming names or avoiding clichés (player superstitions!), but Glanville does provide a nuanced approach to the steroid controversy. As a player representative to the union, one expects Glanville to want a hush-hush over steroids, but he also claims to have never used them (and with anemic power throughout his career, I think we can trust him). So he has to be conflicted between his commitment to player privacy and his anger at those who tried to get ahead of him by using drugs. I'll certainly be looking for the book. Seems like it should be a quick read, and it will probably have the little day-to-day baseball stuff that I am always eager to read about (see this review).

Review: The Guns of August

2010-04-28T12:01:00.001-04:00

My Aunt May has been telling me to read Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August for what seems to be ages. Boy was I stupid not to do so as soon as she recommended it. Tuchman's work recounts the first month of World War I: August, 1914. I have to admit to knowing very little about WWI, but this made for a great primer into the causes of the war as well as the reasons it got bogged down in the trenches.

A few things surprised me about the opening month of the war. The first was the transitional state that war was in. We tend to think of war as something that happened before mechanized weaponry or something that happened after. WWI shows that this was not the case. Weaponry used in battle of course included heavy artillery, rifles, airplanes, and machine guns. But it also included lances, bicycles, horses, and bayonets. Some of the massive casualties were undoubtedly caused by these discrepancies in firepower. I had the hardest time wrapping my mind around the idea of war that wasn't quite 19th Century but also wasn't firmly 20th Century either.

But the highlight of this book is Tuchman's writing. It took me a while to read, but a lot of that was owed to thesis writing. Tuchman's prose is absolutely gorgeous, and it draws you in. Throughout the book, I found myself angry and sympathizing with the Germans, British, French, Russians, and Belgians. She didn't allow retrospective history to get in the way of writing: the Germans aren't evil, and the British aren't demi-gods. All of the participants are instead just fallible human beings. Its devastating to realize how much human life was lost in the stupidity, and Tuchman really details the magnitude of tragedy involved, regardless of side.

While a lot of people who read the book focus on the (admittedly wonderful) first paragraph, I had a different favorite that really shows Tuchman's style. In Chapter 22, as she is setting up the Battle of the Marne that was to decide the fate of France, Tuchman writes this:

September 4 opened with a sense of climax felt in widely separated places; a kind of extra-sensory awareness that great events sometimes send ahead. In Paris, Gallieni felt this was the "decisive" day. In Berlin, Princess Blücher wrote in her diary, "Nothing is talked of but the expected entry into Paris." In Brussels the leaves had begun to fall, and a sudden wind blew them in gusts about the street. People felt the hidden chill of autumn in the air and wondered what would happen if the war were to last through the winter. At the American Legation Hugh Gibson noted a "growing nervousness" at German Headquarters where there had been no announcements of victories in four days. "I am sure there is something big in the air today."

What a beautiful way to set the stage for one of history's most important days.

If you haven't read The Guns of August and you have even a modicum of interest in history, pick up a copy. It is easily one of the best history books I've ever come across.

Like Douglas MacArthur, I Return

2010-04-27T12:16:00.000-04:00

Hi there blog! It's good to see you again. Sorry I've been away for nearly two months, but thesis writing got in the way. After doing 80 pages of "The Manipulation of the Perception of Time in John Adams's Doctor Atomic," I didn't want to write any more. But that's all done now, so here I am again. I'll have a new review of Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August up tomorrow. (Sneak peak: I loved it).

While writing, my to-read list apparently took the rabbit spirit of Easter and multiplied like crazy, so you can expect some new stuff coming relatively regularly again. I've got William Manchester's biography of Douglas MacArthur, Chuck Klosterman's IV, Jack Lynch's The Lexicographers Dilemma (check out this review at VPO), Gabriel García Márquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude, and a bunch of other stuff. I'm thinking of taking a trek through some Shakespeare this summer, maybe the histories. And, despite finishing the thesis, I'm already starting some reading in anticipation of the dissertation, so if I find anything interesting, I'll pass it on! I'll see if I can't restart Sunday Book Banter again too.

As for right now, I'm reading a new anthology of essays on my favorite composer (and likely dissertation subject), Benjamin Britten. Edited by Lucy Walker of the Britten-Pears Foundation, the book is a collection of essays written by mostly new scholars. I'm particularly interested in Cameron Pyke's analysis and comparison of Britten's War Requiem with Dimitri Shostakovich's Fourteenth Symphony.

So stay tuned! There's plenty more on the way, and this blog will be rolling regularly again!

"Last Train From Hiroshima" Withdrawn

2010-03-04T12:30:00.001-05:00

I wrote about Charles Pellegrino's Last Train From Hiroshima a few weeks ago. Since then, the books publisher has been alerted to several glaring factual errors in the book. In a recent post, Jacket Copy does a great job of detailing what has happened. But it's your typical history book story of "My sources lied!" That seems fair enough, but as the publisher has dug more deeply into the book they've found more and more problems, including the inclusion of someone who doesn't exist (Pellegrino says it was a pseudonym).

An interesting question that Jacket Copy raises is: how much should publishers fact check? Obviously, they can't check everything. There are bound to be errors. But in a book that received so much press and attention, why did it take Henry Holt (the publisher) so long to check it out?

Needless to say, the book is no longer on my to-read shelf. And as far as Pellegrino? He appears to have taken his cue from Major Kong and ridden The Bomb to his own death.

Review: Odd Man Out

2010-03-02T12:01:00.001-05:00

Aside from music, one of my biggest passions in life is baseball. Since 1994 I've been a huge fan of the Seattle Mariners. I care far too much about baseball and spend far too much time reading about it online. But one thing I don't read enough of is baseball books. When I read The Boys of Summer by George Kahn, I loved it (or at least the first half of it). I've read some other baseball stuff that is just superb. But then you get the real clunkers. And when a baseball book stinks, it's just unbearable. I want them to be good so badly that it upsets me when they are not.

Well I was killing some time at the UMD bookstore the other day, and came across Odd Man Out: A Year on the Mound with a Minor League Misfit by Matt McCarthy. I'm not sure why it struck me, but I looked it up on my Kindle and downloaded it there. I've never been happier with a baseball book in my life. It doesn't have any of the sabermetric statistics that I'm learning to like, and it isn't really advanced technically. What it is is a superb recounting of McCarthy's year in the Anaheim Angel's farm system.

McCarthy was a left-handed pitcher for an abysmal Yale team. In 2002, after graduating from one of the top universities in the world, he was picked in the 21st round of the amateur draft by the Angels. 21st-round picks are usually people that will never make an impact on the big-league team. And the same is true of McCarthy. But his assignment to the Provo Angels, based in the geographic heart of the Mormon religion provides for some fantastic stories, and we're lucky they were experienced by someone who can write as well as McCarthy does.

He tells of extended spring training and his time in Provo, UT. But the best part of the book is the detailing of the players themselves. We get some big names (new Mariners 1B Casey Kotchman's dad is McCarthy's manager in Provo. White Sox closer Bobby Jenks makes a cameo as a drunk blowhard [which in turn makes me like Jenks even more now that I see his complete transformation], Joe Saunders is hated by his teammates, Ervin Sanatana puts no effort into his game, and Alberto Callaspo engages in hijinks galore), and we get some people that even the most avid baseball fan hasn't heard of.

These are the people that make the story special. Two players come immediately to mind, and both were (at one point) McCarthy's roommates. The first roommate, always referred to as Sunshine, was a bit of an eccentric player, who most of the team thought was only there as a favor. He served the season as the bullpen catcher, one of the least glorious jobs in all of baseball. After initially disliking him, McCarthy seems to end up with a great fondness for the crazy Californian.

The other is Randy Burden, a devout Christian who tried to push the Bible onto McCarthy while also trying to be supportive in a non-imposing way. McCarthy details the brusque manner in which he treated Burden, and then reveals that Burden died after the 2002 season. You can sense a profound regret in McCarthy's writing both that he wasn't there for his teammate in life, and afterwards. These segments must have been very difficult for McCarthy to write, as he lays himself out as kind of an ass.

The other truly inspiring character is Tom Kotchman, the Provo Angel's manager. The way he is described, he is truly a "player's manager."If his team plays baseball the "way it was meant to be played" he'll do anything for them. At one point, Kotchman offers any money that his players need with no strings attached. For some, this was they only way they could eat on the meager rookie-ball salary they received. As clichéd as it sounds, I absolutely loved this bit from Kotchman:

If you play hard for me, I will do anything for you. Anything! And to see some of you just going through the motions... it kills me. You're disrespecting the game!

These kids were given the chance to live the dream of thousands of people. To play professional baseball. And while you can't blame them for taking it for granted (most people who routinely do amazing things take them for granted), you have to appreciate what Kotchman is trying to instill in his players.

The author is very straightforward about the fact that he wasn't a very good pitcher. Without fear of spoiling anything (it pretty much gives the ending on the back cover), I note that even though McCarthy got cut in Spring Training of 2003, he's not doing too shabbily for himself: having attended Harvard Medical School.

If you're looking for a good baseball book, but this one now. The pace was fast and the story telling was phenomenal. I can't recommend it enough.

Sunday Book Banter: Feb. 28, 2010

2010-02-28T20:57:00.002-05:00

Well, the Washington Post has been letting me down lately. They didn't deliver during Snowmageddon (understandable), or the next weekend (even after I reported my paper as undelivered), or the weekend after (though they did bring it on Monday). Today I got my paper on time, and the Book World section didn't have a single book that I found compelling. So after a few discouraging weeks, I'm changing the name of this to "Sunday Book Banter" and expanding the scope to the big book sections across the nation on Sundays. Expect it to focus mainly on the WaPo, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times, but if something else catches my eye, it may pop up here too. Cue the (new) logo!

Today's book comes from the Sunday Book Review in the NYT. It's the much-anticipated new biography of Willie Mays penned by James Hirsch. Reviewer Pete Hamill immediately begins waxing poetic about the yesteryear of baseball, while showing the fact that it's not a topic he writes on with any regularity:

A long time ago in America, there was a beautiful game called baseball. This was before 30 major-league teams were scattered in a blurry variety of divisions; before 162-game seasons and extended playoffs and fans who watched World Series games in thick down jackets; before the D.H. came to the American League; before AstroTurf on baseball fields and aluminum bats on sandlots; before complete games by pitchers were a rarity; before ballparks were named for corporations instead of individuals; and long, long before the innocence of the game was permanently stained by the filthy deception of steroids.

Ahhh, we're in for a "the game used to be good" screed. Well, before you get on the bully pulpit of baseball, make sure you come to terms with the face that no one uses periods in DH (or 1B, RF, LF, SS, et al. for that matter). I don't mind older scribes going on and on about the beauty of the game (in fact, I often enjoy it), but I want a certain base level of knowledge to be demonstrated before I can take them seriously.

Well, Hamill goes on to list his bona fides as a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers. I suppose I can't blame him for not keeping up with baseball after his team was ripped from him in 1957. Knowing that Hamill grew up a Dodger fan when the Mays-Robinson rivalry was so heated made me expect that he would be a bit bitter about Say Hey.

But he isn't. Hamill describes how he stopped caring at all about baseball after the Dodgers left, and writes that Hirsch does a splendid job of filling him in on what he missed. How Mays could have probably had more than 700 home runs had he not played in the notoriously windy Candlestick Park in San Francisco. How Mays got to play against Sandy Koufax (could that be the best pitcher/hitter combo to ever grace the game?). And how Mays would spend his spare time helping out in the community, long before that was seen as just another good PR move.

Hamill's writing here is good, but I didn't really need any convincing. I'm a baseball fan, so I feel I need to read this book. More than any other sport, baseball has an ever-present relationship with its history. Certainly, the steroids era has has killed some of it, but we can compare our players today with those of yesterday. I know it sounds corny, and probably a bit hackneyed, but part of what I love about baseball is that history. So the Willie Mays book is kind of a no-brainer for me. But if I needed any more convincing, Hamill gives me one last great reason: "Willie Mays brought us joy. All of us."

Review: Up In The Air

2010-02-26T22:13:00.000-05:00

A couple of weekends ago, I had a free Saturday. I had no idea what to do, so I started trying to see if I could find any movies that I would want to but Victoria wouldn't. I saw that Up In The Air was playing at the Gallery Place theatre. Now, I will see pretty much anything with George Clooney in it, and I had heard enough good reviews to make seeing this in the theatre worth it. Turns out, I freaking loved the movie. Some nice humor, nothing too over-the-top, a bit of dark human drama. Pretty much everything I could ask for in a movie.

I decided to pick up Walter Kirn's novel of the same name on which the movie was based. I of course expected some changes, but the general plot would be the same, right? Absolutely not. The book and the movie share a few things:

Ryan Bingham is the protagonist and narrator
Alex is a love interest
Ryan's sister is getting married
Ryan is attempting to reach a high number of frequent flier miles (the actual # is different)
Ryan fires people for a living

Now that seems like a pretty substantial list. But there are some major differences. The book's Bingham looks forward to not flying. The movie's would find this insufferable. The book's Bingham is based out of Denver and spends most of his time in the West, while hoping for a job in Omaha. The movie's is based in Omaha and is trying to keep his job there while flying across the entire nation.

But the biggest difference between the two is who Ryan Bingham really is. In the movie, I saw Bingham as a fairly down-to-earth (despite all the flying) guy with some definite family and social issues, but nothing you wouldn't expect from a guy who spends his life in the air (to the tune of 10 million miles, all domestic). In the book, we are led to believe that Bingham is either insane, or just very amnesiac. (It's worth noting that other people have seen the insanity in the movie's Bingham. In his review of the movie, Will Leitch writes "Isn’t Ryan Bingham, all told, kind of insane? Just a step or two removed from Adam Sandler’s Barry Egan in Punch Drunk Love, he’s obsessed with American Airline frequent flier miles, a loner misfit who can’t interact with another human being longer than it takes to pay a bar tab." So there is that.)

Also, the book's Bingham has a strange fascination with drugs that leads to an episode in Las Vegas which was one of the most disenchanting passages I've read in a while. It is completely out of the realm of possibility to think that the movie version of Bingham would have this same thing happen. And here's where I am a bit confused. Did I find this passage so horrible because I was upset that our "hero" becomes an antihero? I'd like to think I've got enough appreciation for dark literature/film/etc. to like a good antihero, but here I'm not sure. I was really pulling for Bingham to have some sort of fulfillment, and he doesn't get it. Part of my problem though is that the Las Vegas scene doesn't seem entirely believable. Maybe it's partially the movie image of Bingham I had, but I never was able to fully believe that even book Bingham would go on a Vegas bender. It seems too cliché.

All of this said, would I recommend it? Sure. It's a really fast read, and it does have some interesting bits. For instance, this take on materialism (note: Great West is the made-up airline Bingham flies):

I know of no pleasure more reliable than consuming a great American brand against the backdrop featured in its advertising. Driving a Ford pickup down brown dirt roads. Swigging a Coke on the beach in Malibu. Flying Great West over central Colorado. It's a feeling of restfulness and order akin, I suspect, to how the ancient Egyptians felt watching the planets line up above the Pyramids. You're in the right place, you're running with the right forces, and if the wind should howl tomorrow, let it.

So yeah, if you've got nothing better to read, pick up a copy of Up In the Air, but I don't think it's anything you should specifically make time for.

Review: Right Ho, Jeeves

2010-02-22T20:27:00.000-05:00

I had read somewhere about the P.G. Wodehouse "Jeeves & Wooster" stories. I'm not sure where, and I don't quite remember when, but for some reason it piqued my interest. They were described as riotously funny British humor, and that tends to be something up my alley. After some searching, I found out it didn't matter what order one read the stories in, as none of the plots relied on one another. So I dove into one I found for free on Project Gutenberg: Right Ho, Jeeves. Let me go ahead and ruin any anticipation by saying: go buy this now.

That's Stephen Fry as the butler (actually, valet, but we'll go with butler) Jeeves, and Hugh Laurie as Bertram Wooster. Jeeves is your (stereo)typical tight-lipped butler, always willing to do what is asked of him despite what may be obvious defects in a plan. Bertram Wooster is a well-meaning dunderhead, as well as our narrator. Everything he touches gets all mussed up, and it falls to Jeeves to fix it. In Right Ho, Jeeves alone Wooster messes up (and Jeeves fixes)

The engagement of his cousin
The love affairs of a school-friend
The state of employ of the French chef Anatole at his aunt's estate
The viability of his Aunt's newspaper
A speech giving awards at a local grammar school

The typical formula is as follows: Jeeves wants to fix something, Wooster thinks he can do better, Wooster fails, Wooster fails some more, Wooster proves that there is no floor to failure, Jeeves fixes it all somehow. This seems like it could get tedious, but Wodehouse writes with such concise wit that it never does.

Another part of why this book was so delightful is that it's an early-30s period piece. What a fantastic time to set a story in. Neat cars, lots of fine drinks, trains to Cannes for the summer, and the leftover sexual inhibitions of the Victorian era coexisting with a more liberal ideology.

I think it's best just to have a few quotes here. They're taken entirely out of context, but you don't really need the context to get the wit (though it does make it even better).

And yet, if he wants this female to be his wife, he's got to say so, what? I mean, only civil to mention it.

I studied it in a profound reverie for the best part of two dry Martinis and a dividend.

I could not but remember how often, when in her company at Cannes, I had gazed dumbly at her, wishing that some kindly motorist in a racing car would ease the situation by coming along and ramming her amidships. As I have already made abundantly clear, this girl was not one of my most congenial buddies.

Uncle Tom, in addition to not liking burglars, is a bloke who has always objected to the idea of being cooked in his sleep, so when he bought the place he saw to it that the fire bell should be something that might give you heart failure.

And finally, on Jeeves:

To the best of my knowledge, he has never encountered a charging rhinoceros, but should this contingency occur, I have no doubt that the animal, meeting his eye, would check itself in mid-stride, roll over and lie purring with its legs in the air.

The whole thing is delightful, like reading a period version of The Hitchhiker's Guide or the novel on which half of Monty Python was based. If you've got any taste for British humor, it's an absolute must-read.

Review: The Iliad

2010-02-11T18:09:00.000-05:00

I finally finished The Iliad yesterday after having it slowed a bit by reading Pride and Prejudice. It was a phenomenal book, but tended to get a bit repetitive in parts. But there is even a reason for that, and it's one I can understand. What the story does really well is portray some characters very deeply, and make them really connect with the reader. I'll break this review down into the good and the bad.

First, the bad: the battle scenes tended to blend in my mind. Though the battles themselves are described in incredible detail, the acts of heroism become redundant after a while. I get that big Ajax is really quite strong. As is Hector. As is Agamemnon. As is Patroclus. As is... you get the point. There are only so many times I want to read something along the lines of "He challenged the son of _____ and called on (insert God here) to help him. He let fly his spear and it hit the buckler in the middle and pierced through. The dark death fell over _______'s eyes." Unless I am invested in the person, why do I need to know their background?

Now, there's a reason for this. The Iliad is a sort of history, but it was also originally sung or recited. The repetitiveness makes two things possible: comprehensiveness and flow. So that's why, while it bugged me, the nitty gritty wasn't a dealbreaker with this story. Which leads me to...

The good: the breadth, emotion, horror, and beauty of this story are unbelievable. Those characters that do play major roles are well-developed. You can't help but feel terribly as Achilles weeps over the death of his friend Patroclus. And the same goes for Priam as he tries to regain the body of Hector. The Iliad really doesn't hide the emotion and pain of war at all, be it through graphic descriptions of killing or heart-rending passages about those affected by the war. There is a reason this story has survived for thousands of years: it's incredibly compelling. Sure, in our modern time some of it seems unbelievable, but I think that added to it. Two armies fighting seems stupid. Two armies fighting while a group of gods do the same on the same field? That seems epic, and as if it is somehow more important. Does it make sense that way? Not really. Nevertheless, that's what I ended up feeling when I read this.

If, like me, you've waited this long to read The Iliad, don't hesitate any more. Go out and get Robert Fagles' translation (it was amazingly good, and never got bogged down in weird turns of phrase) and read it soon. At some point in the near future, I'll be diving into his version of The Odyssey, so expect a report from that in the next couple of months. I need a break from epics for a bit though. So next up will be P.G. Wodehouse's Right Ho, Jeeves, which I'm already halfway through. Look for that soon!

Book World Banter: Feb. 7, 2010

2010-02-07T13:09:00.000-05:00

I wasn't sure if I'd do this today, since we didn't get our paper (thanks Snowmageddon), but since the series is only one-week old, I figured I ought to. Book World today reviewed a number of interesting books (Henry Paulson's insider take on the financial crisis, and a book about the effects of nuclear power on the American government), but I'd like to focus on what may be the most harrowing. Joseph Kanon's The Last Train from Hiroshima provides an in-depth look at the effects of the atomic bomb on those who survived and were killed by it. Reviewer Charles Pellegrino does an excellent job of balancing the horror we feel at reading about this terrible event, and the fascination which comes from something that so few of us actually understand. What is a nuclear explosion actually like?

Apparently Kanon addresses this from both the human and the scientific standpoints. The horror of living with radiation poisoning and the biological effects of the plasma cloud that accompanied the explosion. The book focuses on a large cast of characters, and traces the events of the day and their lives afterwards. Like so many books in this style (think The Boys of Summer):

cross-cutting fatigue inevitably sets in, and Pellegrino's account of what happened to everyone later, the legacy, lacks the cohesion of the earlier day-by-day approach.

That said, the book looks absolutely fascinating and terrifying. One other note that I'm glad to read is that Kanon doesn't address the question of "should we have dropped it?" Certainly, it is still a relevant debate (though no amount of debate will expunge the event from history), but it has its place. A book describing the effects is not that place. If we want a look at the "should haves" we should look elsewhere. This book, however, will be going on my to-read list for sure.

Review: Pride and Prejudice

2010-02-07T11:50:00.000-05:00

Take another "Why have I not read this?" book off of my list, and mark it as a resounding success. I finally got around to reading Jane Austen's seminal classic Pride and Prejudice. It was absolutely phenomenal, and I'm glad that Victoria prevailed upon me to read it.

I'm not really sure how much can be said about this book, though. I certainly have nothing profound to offer to the discourse of one of the most popular and written-about books of all time. But I do have a few minor observations from my read.

Charlotte, Elizabeth's best friend, has a rather amusing observation about the amount of affection ladies should show to men in order to get the point across:
"In nine cases out of ten a woman had better show MORE affection than she feels. Bingley likes your sister undoubtedly; but he may never do more than like her, if she does not help him on."
We men have the stunning ability to be quite dense about these things. When it can be painfully obvious to the word that someone likes us, we'll hem and haw until the opportunity has passed. Austen (through Charlotte) has absolutely nailed it here.
Austen has an absolutely superb wit, and a really graceful way with words. For instance, we might say "Because Bingley's sister was insincere to Jane, Elizabeth disliked her." Austen gives us:
"their indifference towards Jane when not immediately before them restored Elizabeth to the enjoyment of all her former dislike."
Elizabeth relishes disliking these people, and as a reader, I certainly did too. I'm glad that Austen didn't try to make contempt seem bad, because in many cases it's warranted.
Another word for the ladies, from Mr. Darcy:
"All this she must possess," added Mr. Darcy, "and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading."
Spot on Mr. Darcy.
Mr. Bennet is one of the best characters I've read in a while.
Wickham really struck me as being quite similar to Alfred Jingle in The Pickwick Papers. I wonder if Dickens was reading much of Austen's work?
Finally, Elizabeth gives Mr. Darcy some of the best advice I've read in ages:
"You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure."

If you haven't read Pride and Prejudice, go out and get a copy post haste. It's really fantastic, and quite shameful that it took me 24 years to get to it.

Snowmageddon (or whatever it is we're calling this)

2010-02-06T11:26:00.000-05:00

We take a break from the frenetic pace of book blogging to bring you an update on the Super Snow-mageddon-ocalypse. If you want better updates, with prettier pictures, I'd recommend taking a look at VPO. She doesn't haven anything up right this second (other than a delicious cookie recipe), but she's been a shutterbug all storm and I'm sure her post will do it more justice than this.

Anyhow, I went and shoveled some snow with our neighbor last night. First time I've ever shoveled snow. This Washington state boy is all grown up, now. Maybe. But, as of 9ish last night, here's the view up our street.

Since then, in the ensuing 13 or so hours, we've probably added a foot. Yeesh. I'll probably go walk around tomorrow once it's all said and done and take a few more pictures, but this looks like it might actually live up to what the forecasts told us! Stay warm, everybody!

Book World Banter

2010-01-31T15:11:00.003-05:00

We here at the VPO-MM household are Sunday-only subscribers to the Washington Post, and this may become a regular feature if Book World keeps having some interesting books. That's hardly a guarantee though, as the paper has absolutely eviscerated the Book World section and made it a shell of its former self. Now, we only get 3-5 books reviewed in the average week. So, if you see a week missing, it's because there wasn't anything great that week. Anyhow, since it's a feature, it gets a logo.

Catching my eye in this weeks Book World is The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior by Paul Strathern (link goes to review). The book apparently aims to tell of the intersection in 16th-Century Italy of Niccolò Machiavelli, the man who inspired The Prince, and possible drag-queen Leonardo da Vinci. Cesare Borgia, the man whose winner-take-all ways inspired Machiavelli's treatise, hired da Vinci in his quest to unite Italy in a new Roman empire. In addition to being a famous artist, da Vinci was a renowned engineer, and Borgia used his talents to wage more efficient war. As reviewer Steven Levingston notes:

Da Vinci contributed his considerable gifts to strengthening the duke's fortresses (curved walls reduced the impact of cannonballs), drawing maps (with the use of his invention, the hodometer, to measure precise distances) and building ad hoc bridges for the duke's army to cross rivers.

After he saw the ruthless duke in action, da Vinci quit his position and was never the same again. Machiavelli was able to observe, mostly from afar, as a diplomat from Florence, and grew to admire Borgia's grasp of power. While he certainly couldn't condone the duke, Machiavelli realized that politics didn't work in the realm of the theoretical and devised his book on governing based on the explicitly real concept that ruthlessness was a phenomenal way of maintaining power.

Levingston gave the book a fantastic review, and it's been added to my Goodreads list. It seems like it might be in the same vein as Evening in the Palace of Reason, a book about the short meeting between Frederick the Great and J.S. Bach, another book I wish to read. Both detail meetings that certainly didn't define any of the primary actors lives, yet serve as a window through which we may better understand their biography and the society of the time. An interesting method of writing history, to be sure.

The Iliad: Finally reading it

2010-01-28T22:45:00.000-05:00

The Iliad is one of those books that make me ask, "How have I not read this?" If you take a look at my Goodreads list, there are quite a few of those (Pride and Prejudice, Fahrenheit 451, For Whom the Bell Tolls, etc.). I've got a problem with guilt-reading that exasperates Victoria: I will often read books just because I think I should read them, not because I think I will enjoy them.

And that's partially how I came to The Iliad. It had been something I wanted to read for quite a while, just because I felt like I ought to. And then, the same uncle and aunt who told me to read The Pickwick Papers recommended this and The Odyssey. So I asked for the Robert Fagles translations for Christmas, and got them. I'm not sure why I wanted Fagles other than the fact that I like the covers, but I'm glad I chose his versions. I've not finished the book yet, but I've got some midway thoughts after this short intermission.

Achilles for the ladies

I'm only about half of the way through, but even after only a little bit, I think the book is astonishingly good. I remember having to read parts of it in High School (and probably eschewing that responsibility) and hating it. I think the possibility of rhyming couplets completely turned me off. Well, good news! The Fagle's translation doesn't rhyme! Thank the undying gods.

The thing which most surprises me about it all is how incredibly graphic the violence is. I often feel like I'm reading a screenplay for a Tarrentino film. It's not necessarily a bad thing, as it is great at illustrating the horror of war, it was just unexpected. One passage I just read the other night mention someone having their head and arms cut off and rolling away like a log. Eeesh.

I'll be sure to check in with a review after I'm done. As an addendum (I started writing this five days ago), I've started reading one of the aforementioned "should read" books on my metro rides to and from UMD. I'll have a review of the mystery book coming up as well, and it's sure to be positive!

(Kind of) New Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Book

2010-01-24T20:50:00.001-05:00

Well this book is going on my to-read list. A new translation of an Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn book that I hadn't heard of just got a rave review in today's Washington Post. The novel, In the First Circle, tells the tale of prisoners in a Soviet work camp and of atomic espionage in the heart of the Cold War.

I was amazed by Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich when I read it in High School, and I have a copy of The Gulag Archipelago that I've been meaning to read for ages. But this may come first after reading what the Post had to say. Just a note to take a look for it.

A New Look

2010-01-23T21:17:00.000-05:00

I figured that since I was helping Victoria out with her new look today, I might as well change mine too. (Go ahead, make the obligatory "Well, if you don't ever post you might as well do something" joke.) I like the new swanky look, though to be honest I wonder if the left side is a bit too narrow. Let me know what you think in the comments.

As for other things, be on the lookout for a post or two about The Iliad, as that's what I'm currently reading. After that, who knows? Maybe some more stuff on the Kindle, though in the real book world I still have Superfreakonomics, Bill Simmons' The Book of Basketball, The Odyssey, and Adorno on Music to read. Plus, I want to pick up (or get from the library, or whatever) a copy of Game Change, the political book du jour. So be on the lookout for some of that.

Review: Battle for America 2008

2010-01-18T18:27:00.002-05:00

I've been looking for a good inside-story sort of book about the 2008 presidential election for a while now. When the Washington Post reviewed The Battle for America: The Story of an Extraordinary Election, I was intrigued enough to place a copy on hold at the library. The book wasn't exactly what I was looking for, but it wasn't bad either.

I was hoping that this book would provide a ton of insider information that you couldn't get elsewhere. And in a way, it did. There are interviews with countless staff members on each of the major campaigns all the way up to the candidates themselves. But interviews alone don't cut it. The book is a phenomenal overview of the election for someone who wasn't there. Balz and Johnson have a knack for strong narrative, and the broad strokes that the book sometimes takes are great for what they are.

But I feel like what they are isn't enough. After an in-depth look at Iowa and New Hampshire for the Democratic primaries, Super Tuesday is wrapped up in just a few pages. From what I remember, that was the tensest time of the entire campaign. Hillary and Obama had split the four early states, so it was do-or-die in Super Tuesday. I'd love to have read more about the operations of both campaigns as they scrambled to get the necessary delegates.

And the other part of the campaign that lacks depth is the coverage of the Republican side of things. I closely followed the Democratic primaries, probably to the detriment of my knowledge in the Republican world. But I feel like a vast majority of people reading this book (if you're a Republican, why would you want to rehash a staggering loss?) are in the same boat. Sure, McCain had things wrapped up pretty quickly, but does that mean that the Democratic primaries should get literally three times more space in the book than the Republican counterparts?

Balz and Johnson also had the annoying habit of assuming a bit too much knowledge. In the final chapter, they wrote this:

The S&P index of the leading five hundred stocks had fallen more than at any time since 1937, with every sector taking double-digit hits...

What in the world does "double-digit hits" mean? Are we talking in terms of percentages (and percentage of what?)? Is it in terms of dollars (a $75 hit doesn't sound too bad to me)? Is it in terms of public opinion? The metric of the S&P 500 itself? I can't tell, and too often Balz and Johnson leave loose ends like this.

That said, the book is a superb broad narrative of the election. A great reminder of how things played out in the larger sense. Maybe I just need to pick up a copy of A Long Time Coming by the staff at Newsweek. Every election cycle they send reporters with the campaigns under the promise that whatever they collect will not be written until after the election. Maybe in that book I can find more of the nitty-gritty for which I was looking.

Review: The Pickwick Papers

2010-01-13T17:52:00.004-05:00

At Thanksgiving dinner, I mentioned to my Uncle and Aunt that I was planning on reading War and Peace over my winter break. Much to my surprise, the two of them hated the book, and thus the idea. So, thoroughly rebuffed, I asked what they would recommend. I got The Iliad and The Odyssey (yes, it's practically criminal that I haven't read them before, but I have new copies that I got for Christmas, and that will be remedied soon). But then they said "read The Pickwick Papers."

Now it was my turn to act disgusted at a book. "Nope. I hate Dickens," I told them. My Aunt persisted, and told me this was like no other novel Dickens ever wrote. The line that sold it for me was, "It's like Dickens was on uppers when he wrote it." How could I say no to that? You'll find the review after the break.

After finishing the mammoth book (875 pages in the edition I had before switching over to the Kindle), I'm glad they convinced me. It's a sprawling novel, definitely in the picaresque tradition, and at times it drags. That said, it has some of the best characters I've ever come across in literature. Mr. Pickwick is the esteemed leader of a club named for him, and the novel chronicles his journeys through England over about a year and a half.

But the character that I liked most was also my biggest shock. When the back cover noted that there was a character with a cockney accent, I knew I would hate him. Nothing is more annoying to me than when an author writes an accent and leaves me to parse through it (See: Dracula). So imagine my shock when Sam Weller became my favorite character in the book. His accent is written out, but easy to understand. That's all I ask for. Take note, authors, if you're going to write an accent, use Sam Weller as your model.

The other reason I was shocked to find I liked Sam was because he reminded me so much of one of my least favorite literary figures: Sancho Panza. Both sidekicks to wandering heros, both love to spout aphorisms, and both figure themselves to be witty. The difference is that Dickens pulls this off. He is actually raucously funny throughout the novel, and I found myself laughing out loud a few times.

Now, all of this is not to say the novel had no faults. At times, it tended to ramble too much. Dickens kept a fairly tight reign, and you could tell that even he understood his characters were often too prosaic, as in this example describing Mr. Snodgrass revealing his love:

...it afforded him an opportunity of acknowledging, before their mutual friends, that he loved Mr. Wardle's daughter deeply and sincerely; that he was proud to avow that the feeling was mutual; and that if thousands of miles were placed between them, or oceans rolled their waters, he could never for an instant forget those happy days, when first - et cetera, et cetera.

This was one of the points I laughed out loud. You can almost hear Dickens yelling at his narrator: "GET ON WITH IT!!"

This book really is fantastic. I do need to learn that picaresque novels (this, Don Quixote, etc) tend to annoy me at times, so I should try having some secondary reading material on hand. But if you haven't read it, go out and get a copy (or grab a public domain version online) and give it a look.

Kindle! and Blogging this Year

2010-01-03T19:54:00.001-05:00

So I'm pretty pumped after getting a new Kindle 2 for Christmas. I've been toying around with it, and discovered a way to get Project Gutenberg books on the Kindle almost effortlessly. I've been reading the real book of Charles Dickens' The Pickwick Papers, so I found a free public domain copy for the Kindle. Thus far, it's an enjoyable experience, though it will certainly take some getting used to. That said, now that I can get a load of public domain books both instantly and for free, expect to see me reading more classics this year.

And what else can you expect this year? I'll be trying to blog more regularly. Let's see if I can't be half as productive as Victoria. I'll try to do more regular reviews, and maybe see if I can't get outside of just doing that. As a note, I'm going to be writing my thesis this semester so that may slow things down. Theoretically, though, the bulk of that work should be done by mid-March (eek!).

Finally, you ought to go check out Ennui and Ivory, a new blog by friend of the blog Paul Campbell. It could be fairly interesting, if he keeps it up, as he's an excellent writer with a deft hand at pith.

That's it for now, but I'll be checking in later this week!

Review: A Few Seconds of Panic

2009-12-05T22:36:00.000-05:00

Friend of the blog Paul recommended this book, and within a week of his doing so my on hold copy had arrived at the library. The last sports book I delved into was Satchel so I was leery of taking on another one. But, I'm certainly glad I did. You can find the review below the break.

Stefan Fatsis, writer for the Wall Street Journal, decided to become an NFL player at the age of 43. Unlike George Plimpton (who wrote Paper Lion about playing as a QB for the Detroit Lions), Fatsis decided to take a position that he thought someone of good, but not otherworldly, athletic ability could learn: kicker. He spends a year training, and finally gets to join the Denver Broncos. There, he is no longer a journalist, but an honest-to-God member of the team. After some initial doubt, the players accept him, and he does everything they do. Everything except kick in a real game.

That's what I'd like to talk about here. There isn't too much I can sum up otherwise, other than: wow, the NFL life is really not all that great. But why didn't Fatsis get the chance to kick in a game? Was it because he was no good? Absolutely not. Mike Shanahan, the notoriously meticulous coach, was fully willing to let Fatsis kick for his team in a game-time situation. Was it because he didn't have an official contract? Kind of. But the games he could have kicked in were preseason, which everyone knows are just exhibition games after the first quarter. They're where the players that nobody knows compete for third-string jobs. But the NFL league offices don't buy this explanation. Instead, they say the games are real, and that allowing Fatsis to kick would have cheapened them.

Does anybody who watches preseason football actually think it isn't cheapened already? It's atrociously dull. And Fatsis had done everything that could be expected of a kicker. For 99.9% of the fans, if he had gone onto the field, they wouldn't have know who he was and would have just thought he was a random guy in camp with the team. If he misses, no one cares. If he makes it... no one cares. So why not let the guy kick? The reputation the NFL has as the No Fun League really gets solidified in this book, and for no apparent reason. They could have gotten fantastic press from Fatsis, and they chose to say no. What a load.

Aside from that though, it's a really fantastic read. You feel like you get to know some of the players, and I got really involved in their stories. If you're a football fan at all, go pick up a copy of the book, you won't regret it. I plan on getting Fatsis' Word Freak about becoming a professional Scrabble player sometime soon. I hope it's half as good as this was.

Review: V for Vendetta

2009-11-30T22:13:00.001-05:00

V for Vendetta is the second Alan Moore book I've read, and further proof that I need to keep delving into the graphic novel/long-form comic genre. The first Moore I came across was the highly-recommendable Watchmen that I read earlier this year, and should probably write about at some point. But V for Vendetta was also pretty enjoyable. I'm glad I read it second, as I'm not sure it would have (by itself) convinced me the genre was worth the effort.

First, let me address the storytelling. Alan Moore is a superb writer, and his stories are compelling, well-paced, and enjoyable to read. V for Vendetta is set in a dystopian England of 1997-8. There has been some sort of calamity (probably nuclear) that has left much of the world destroyed. In this event's wake, a fascist regime has taken control of England, let by "The Leader" who has control of bureaus of intelligence and propaganda called "The Eyes" "The Nose" "The Ears" and "The Mouth." The regime has culled minorities from England, but those who are left lead fairly normal lives.

Yet there is one man who is willing to stand up to the tyranny of the government. He was the victim of hormonal testing in one of the concentration-style camps, and he is single-handedly attempting to bring about revolution. What's interesting about V (our main character), is that he doesn't hope to bring about Democracy, but rather Anarchy, which he sees as the ultimate path to freedom. By systematically killing the leaders of the fascist regime, V hopes to bring this about.

There's a lot to be said in this book about the debate of how best to achieve freedom. Is it, like V proposes, through total Anarchy that begins as chaos and eventually ends in self-policing? Or is it, more traditionally, through some sort of social contract? I truly don't think that V's anarchist ideals could ever work on a large scale, but perhaps in a case where the only sustainable government is a brutal one, there ought to be no government. The book also delves into what might become of the world if nuclear war were to occur? Sure, it's a cliched topic, but one that never ceases to interest me.

But I can't give this book the high praise that I will eventually laud on Watchmen. I think it's because of the artwork. David Lloyd's art here is at times stunningly beautiful, make no doubt about it. The idea to set the "Vicious Cabaret" scene tilted 90 degrees from normal and with music running throughout was brilliant (see the picture below for an example). My problem is that the characters aren't very distinguishable. In Watchmen, you could tell any character from any distance. In V for Vendetta, I was often trying to figure out who people were by their hairstyles. I appreciate the detail that allows me to see specific hairstyles, but I think that characters ought to be readily identifiable for ease of reading. If I want to go back and marvel at the detail around them, that's fine. But slowing every frame to figure just who is talking was tiring at times.

Overall though, I think this is a book I would recommend. Don't let it be your first graphic novel though. I thought Watchmen was a great choice as a first, but Kat at FoBoBlo (who knows way more about this stuff than I do) thinks otherwise. Looking through our GChats, I can't find what she recommended as a first instead (Kat, maybe you can comment and help?) but I know it definitely wasn't Watchmen. I pretty much ignored her on that one.

ANYWAYS. Go ahead, read something and get into graphic novels, and then pick up a copy of V for Vendetta. It's well worth it: great story, and despite my nitpicking, some really fantastic artwork at times.

Review: Love Me

2009-11-26T13:28:00.001-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! It's always one of my favorite holidays, because how can you possibly have too much delicious food? You can't. I stayed up late last night just to finish Garrison Keillor's 2003 novel Love Me. I have to say, I was a bit disappointed. I love Keillor on Prairie Home Companion and his novel Wobegon Boy is one of my favorite novels. So I had pretty high expectations coming into this book. (Aside: I found the book in hardcover for $4 at Second Story Books on DuPont Circle. Bought it, got home, looked inside: it's signed by Keillor!)

The story follows writer Larry Wyler and his mid-life crisis after receiving a huge bonus for writing a national best-seller. He then moves to New York after being unfaithful to his wife (though he doesn't divorce her). What follows is a tale of mid-life angst that is at times amusing, but usually just too drawn out.

Wyler gets hired by the New Yorker and runs into writer's block. He can do nothing about it, and has a series of meaningless affairs and friendships. Somehow he gets tangled up in the mob (they own the New Yorker apparently), misses his wife, and debates leaving New York City. But for some reason, he loves the city that has given him so many troubles. Somewhere in the mix he gets hired as an advice columnist, which becomes his alter-ego "Mr. Blue."

The book had good moments. I always enjoy when Keillor writes anything pertaining to classical music (Wyler loves it), and his midwestern humor shines throughout. Nevertheless, the book dragged on, had too much sex (I mean, really... every 20 or so pages there was some sort of a sex scene. Never too graphic, but good God man.), and was just highly implausible (Wyler killed a mob boss? His wife gladly takes him back after his sleeping around in NYC? Sure, why not?). It's not a book you need to go get. If you really want to read Keillor (and I recommend it), pick up a copy of Wobegon Boy. That's some A+ writing.

Review: The Westing Game

2009-11-23T13:00:00.019-05:00

I am not even a tiny bit above reading a children's book. One of my all-time favorites is Nortan Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth. So when I was at the Mt. Pleasant library the other day and saw a copy of Ellen Raskin's The Westing Game, I thought I'd give it a try. It's a tiny book (literally: only 6.9x5 inches and 219 pages), and I had meant to read it back in middle school. I changed my mind about it several times.

The premise of the books is as follows: Samuel Westing has died and left his estate to 16 strangers (or are they?). They must play his game with the winner receiving the estate. I don't want to give away the plot, but allow me to talk about why this book changed my mind not once, but twice. In the beginning it seemed like a great idea, and I was all for the book. But then I realized that I pretty much hated all of the characters. Scheming, rude, untrusting people. Not the kinds of characters who make for pleasant reading.

This goes on for quite some time, and then right at the end of the book, Raskin turns things around and leaves you thinking that Turtle Wexler (the girl I thought would be the protagonist at first) is indeed a nice person and not a terrible hellion.

It's a hard book to review, because I don't want to give anything away. Suffice to say it's cute and worth your time (mostly because it is such a quick read).

Review: Classic Feynman

2009-11-21T21:09:00.001-05:00

I have a fried who is always telling me what great reading the books of physicist Richard Feynman are. I finally got one from the library the other day, Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character. It's a collection of two books of his, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What do You Care What Other People Think? that has been compiled by Feynman's friend Ralph Leighton.

A bit of biography before I get into the review. Feynman was born in 1918 and went to school at MIT and Princeton for physics. While at Princeton, he was recruited to work on the Manhattan Project. After the war he taught at Cornell and the finally Caltech, where he achieved his greatest fame. In 1961 Caltech was worried that it's entry level physics course was not modern enough, so they asked Professor Feynman, one of the leading quantum physicists in the world, if he would teach the course. Much to everyone's surprise, he agreed, though he had one condition: he would only teach the course once. Caltech wisely recorded all of the lectures (later released in this set) and took pictures of every blackboard diagram he made.

In 1965, Feynman won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in quantum electrodynamic (no, I'm not quite sure what that is either). He was also a member of the presidential commission to investigate the causes of the 1986 Challenger explosion. In 1988 he died of a rare form of cancer.

Now that I have that out of the way, the book itself. It's a must read for anyone even vaguely interested in Feynman the person. Most of the stuff here isn't hard physics, and could certainly be understood by all (the difficult math and science that does pop up is not necessary for understanding the stories themselves). What you get are anecdotes from a fantastic story teller. How about cracking into the safes at the Manhattan Project? Or carousing with women in Brazil? The book is arranged in roughly chronological order so you work your way through Feynman's life without the structure of a biography.

But as good as the stories are, they can drag after a bit. Though they are all excellently told and read quickly, it seems like you're hearing mere variations on a theme. I was ready to give this book an interested-but-not-for-this-long "meh" until I reached the section about the Challenger crash investigation. The Challenger was the space shuttle that exploded 73 seconds after liftoff in January of 1986. Feynman's telling of the investigation and bureaucratic nightmares he faced in at once fascinating, gripping, and infuriating. Why would he be stopped from investigating when no one else wanted to? Why should he not put his nose in NASA's business? It was his mandate! This section completely saved the book for me.

And lest you should end on a bit of a sour note, there are a couple pieces at the end that wrap things up nicely. One is a commencement address Feynman gave to the 1974 Caltech class that encourages the students to make sure they research with integrity, not try merely to get funding. The other is Alan Alda's (yes, the actor) 2002 commencement address to the same school in which he makes an interesting proposal to the students:

What if each of you decided to take just one thing you love about science and, no matter how complicated it is, figure out a how to make it understood by a million people? There are about 500 of you taking part in this ceremony today. If just a few of you were successful, that would make several million people a lot smarter.

What a brilliant idea. In the end, that's what I'm going to take from this book. Feynman doesn't try to impress with big words or lofty ideas; he lets the science amaze you itself. And he tries to make it understandable for anyone, so we can all get a glimpse at how incredibly amazing our universe is.

My Relationship With Giant Books

2009-11-14T23:26:00.000-05:00

Victoria at VPO was writing the other day about finishing books no matter what. She's been doing her best to pass on the habit to me, and for good reason. During my undergrad years, I picked up a really nasty habit of starting books and never finishing them. I can make lots of excuses (I was busy! Books are heavy to carry around! School reading!) but really they're all pretty lame. When it comes down to it, I just have to make time to read non-school stuff. And now that I am, it's incredibly rewarding. I had forgotten how much of an avid reader I can be during those few years.

But what started the problem? The one book I can think of that really got me into this habit was Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. My best friend in high school read it. And I later found out that Victoria read it. My uncle loved it, and wanted me to read it. So I should read it, right? And I tried! I got about 400 pages into it on several different occasions, but never finished. I'm not really sure why. It takes forever to read, but I certainly enjoyed those first 400 pages (even on subsequent readings). But after doing exactly what Atlas can't and dropping my burden, it was the start of something bad.

Now, I read pretty normal sized books, and I am pretty leery of the giants in literature. I still have Atlas Shrugged mocking me from my shelf, and I worry that if I start another behemoth, I won't finish it and the pattern will begin again. This doesn't mean I haven't read any of these. In the past year I've read Don Quixote (ugh) and The Three Musketeers (amazing) and lived to tell the tale.

But the strange thing is, despite my caution around these monoliths, there are a few I desperately want to read. I am planning (at least until I chicken out) to read War and Peace over winter break (the Richard Pevear translation, I think), and that is the representative of door-stop books. Also, I think a group of graduate students and I are going to take on Richard Taruskin's monumental 3,856 page Oxford History of Western Music. We plan on modeling it after the Taruskin Challenge blog, and reading 50 pages a week. At that rate, it will only take 77 weeks to finish.

So I'm not really sure what draws me to these things. Maybe it's the immense sense of satisfaction after I finish them, and maybe it's just knowing that they are often some of the most "important" books ever and that I should read them. When I (hopefully) get through War and Peace, I'm not sure what my next giant of a book will be. Maybe it's time to finally tackle Ayn Rand.

Review: The Ground Beneath Her Feet

2009-11-06T09:57:00.000-05:00

So if you've read my last entry, you know my problems with Salman Rushdie. And this book certainly continued them. Throughout The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Rushdie stayed his usual pretentious self. It was annoying, aggravating, and made me want to put the book down sometimes.

But that said, I didn't. Because more than in Fury, this book kept me interested. We got more moments of Rushdie doing his good stuff towards the end, and in a way it becomes simply heartbreaking. When Rai (the narrator) describes the death of Vina and its aftermath, you truly feel for him. He's lost the love of his life, and so has the world, apparently. The denouement of the story almost feels like a letdown after this glimpse of the author's best writing.

Is it worth a read? Sure, if you've got the extra time. I think it could have been edited down a bit, as the 575 pages seemed overly long-winded at times. But it really does become a compelling story, one in which you become invested in the characters.

One last note. Rushdie uses the same anecdote about the Pope and his driver (the life-long driver brings JPII to the Vatican before he is named pope, the smoke goes up, someone comes out to tell the driver he is fired) that he used in Fury. This was simaltaneously kind of a neat link, and really annoying. Get some new anecdotes, man.

Salman Rushdie and Me

2009-11-04T22:47:00.001-05:00

So I'm in the middle of The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie right now. It's my second novel, after my spin through Fury last year, and it's the second time I hate Rushdie. Why did I go back to him? Why is there a chance that I will again in the future? Why does he at once infuriate and hold me captive?

I know two reasons I came back, and probably will in the future. The first is the importance of his works. It's nearly impossible to have a discussion of significant contemporary literature and not mention Rushdie. He is undeniably influential, having won not only a Booker award, but a "Best of Booker" award in a public vote of past Booker winners. Any talk of controversial books has to mention The Satanic Verses (probably my choice for the next time I read him), which brought the ire of much of the Muslim world on Rushdie. His work is so often referenced that it almost feels irresponsible to not read him.

The second reason I have returned to Rushdie is that he undeniably has a way with words. There are times when his prose is achingly beautiful. His description of the singer Ormus Cama putting a song on tape using no musicians but himself was immediately arresting. (Note: bouncing refers to the process of mixing multiple tracks into fewer; used in the days when magnetic tape made possible only four tracks.)

Each time he lays down a track - he can play every instrument in the studio better than the sessions guys he's just fired - he comes into the booth, lies down on the seating unit, closes his eyes. The sound mixer moves his slides, turns his dials, and Ormus directs him until the music coming out of the speakers is the secret music in his head. Pull those up, push those back, he says. Bring this in here, fade that away there. Okay, it's okay. That's it. Don't change a thing. Go.

You're sure, now, the mixer says. Because this is it. No turning back.

Bouncey, bouncey, Ormus grins, and the mixer laughs and sings back at him.

This was one of the best scenes in any book that I've come across lately. Maybe it's just my fascination with what goes on in the recording studio, but Rushdie nailed it here.

The problem comes almost everywhere else. Rushdie tries so damn hard to force allusion into his writing that it becomes tiresome. I really get the feeling that he writes with the attitude of "No way in hell will you all get all of my references. Suckers." And for some reason (though I'm not sure why) his plot twists irritate me to no end. Ormus and co. live in a world where Kennedy was never shot and the Watergate scandal unfolded exactly as we know it... in the guise of a novel. But Ormus, after an accident, can see into a parallel universe. I'm fine with that idea. Science says there are probably parallel universes. The annoying bit however is: that otherworld is OURS.

Why does Rushdie, feel the need to dabble in other universes in his novels? In Fury it was a land of puppets! Here, it's US! Something of this just strikes me as incredibly pretentious, and I realize this may be unjustified. It is, however, the vibe I get from him. But I came back, didn't I? He certainly keeps me hooked, and he has moments of sublime beauty. If he could channel that for a whole novel, I'd tell everyone I knew to read the book. Rushdie at his best is unparalleled, no one can hope to match him. What good is his best, though, if it only happens rarely?

On a Different Matter Entirely

2009-11-04T09:00:00.001-05:00

As you may or may not know, my life outside of the confines of these HTML walls is lived as a grad student in music history. I have a deep-seated love of classical music, and I've been upset lately that as much as I talk about it in school, I hardly ever get to talk to non-music-nerd people about it. I love having an opportunity to spread this music around, to raise awareness, to inspire other people to fall head-over-heels in love with it. It's why I want to become a professor: that chance to let others into what I enjoy so much.

I've had outlets before for this, including my classical radio show ([not-so-] cleverly titled "Classical Washington") and accompanying blog at WRGW. It's partially thanks to GW that I get the chance to write about classical again. Starting now (the first post is live), I'll be writing classical music posts at FoBoBlo, the blog of Foggy Bottom. You'll get previews of happenings at the Kennedy Center, and other musical events around Foggy Bottom. I'm going to try to make the writing broad enough so it can include everyone: the person who doesn't listen to classical all the way to the person with a 1,500 CD collection. So keep reading here at Metro Marginalia. This is where my book stuff goes. But if you have any desire to read about classical music (or just to read a pretty fantastic blog), check out FoBoBlo.

Dracula - Chapters 26-End: Fina-freaking-ly

2009-10-31T14:40:00.000-04:00

We're done! Rejoice! Did you ever think that a trans-continental chase of a bloodsucking dude could be so boring? Nor did I! Admittedly, it was tense. And the final scene, as Van Helsing and Mina watch all of the parties converging was pretty awesome. I mean, sure, it takes some willing suspension of disbelief to imagine that they all end up in the right place at the right time; but we were already talking about people gaining life by sucking blood. It's a leap I'm willing to make.

But the fight with the gypsies and the killing of Dracula was really heinously anticlimactic. Why couldn't we get a fight between Dracula and the gang? Or at least some tension with the box? As it was: throw the box, open box, stab the vampire. Quincey Morris comes off as a pretty awesome dude though, and he did throughout the whole book. We American's seem nonessential, but pretty great to Stoker. I'm cool with that portrayal.

But really, the strongest character in the whole book is Mina. She's kind of awesome, wielding that revolver and all. At some point I'm going to read League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and I hope there's a really badass version of her in it. What I can't get over, in relation to Mina, is how Van Helsing, more than anyone, professes his love for her. Shouldn't that be Jonathan's job? I really think the old doctor was crushing on Mina.

Overall, if you've not read the book, pick it up. It's tedious at times, that's for sure. But if you're not keeping to a schedule, it'd be a really quick read. And why not get one of the classics off your list quickly. So what'd you all think? I gave it three stars. Let's hear your rating in the comments.

Dracula - Chapters 22-25: Mina Potter and the Dutch Man's Vampire

2009-10-28T13:42:00.000-04:00

So if you're reading this you're probably reading along. I'll spare you plot points to discuss something else. Is Mina Harker actually Harry Potter (thus making Drac He Who Must Not Be Named)? Let's look at a few salient points:

Harry: Scar on forehead
Mina: Scar on forehead

Harry: Scar burns when Voldemort does something
Mina: Scar was burned on when the bite-o-christ touched her

Harry: Can see what Voldemort is up to, especially while dreaming
Mina: Can see what Dracula is up to (but only in a hypnotic dream-like state)

Harry: Voldemort can get in his mind
Mina: Drac can get into hers

The evidence is pretty compelling. I mean, was J.K. just cribbing from Bram? Was our hero of Harry just a progenitor for She Who Shall Never Be Named Here?

Maybe. But you have to admit, it is rather compelling drama. After so many pages of schlock, we're finally getting somewhere. And thank GOD Stoker saved us the time between the decision to go to Varna and actually arriving there. Can you imagine what the diaries from the "in transit" part would have been? Eesh. So things are heating up, but all I can think of is the Harry Potter connection. What do you think? Agree or no?

Dracula - Chapters 17-21: Get on with it!

2009-10-24T21:20:00.002-04:00

Dear heavens this book is dragging. Luckily, it's only one chapter a day, or at this point it'd be easy to lose motivation. So what have I missed telling you about? The boys are off hunting vampires and being absolute freaking idiots. "What's that? Mina looks pale? Poor girl needs sleep!"

NO! NO! NO! You blasted morons. Let's think about what happened to Lucy here gents. Pale? Check. Won't wake up at a normal hour? Check. Acting oddly? Check.

_HE'_ A _A_P_ _ E _OU _U_BA_ _ E_

I'd like to solve the puzzle please.

::wild applause::!

Or at the very least, she's been vamped. I just can't get over how oblivious our gang is about this. I mean, they've been doing nothing but studying Dracula and the way he works. They really couldn't figure this one out? GAH!

On to less infuriating things. Renfield continued to be the most compelling character in the novel. That is until he got murdered by Dracula. But in his last act, he did something both selfish and noble. Attempting to prevent Dracula from getting to Mina was an act that I can't help but think was at least partially motivated by his apparent warm feelings for the woman. Certainly, as Renfield himself says, he was mad at Dracula for not asking his permission to come in, and for not giving him any blood. But I imagine he would have never been so bold as to attempt to seize the Count without some other motivator.

So Renfield sends the boys to catch Dracula just in time and now it appears as if Mina is back in. Good for her. She seems to be the only logical one (though the "I don't want to tell Jonathan of my suspicious dreams, much like those of Lucy" moment was a bit dumb. She can be forgiven though since the dudes were all being idiots towards her). Maybe with Mina on the case we'll finally catch Drac.

Regardless, this book's middle section is not nearly as good as the opening chapters. It's just dragging too much. Here's to hoping our final week is more enjoyable.

Dacula - Chapters 13-16: The ones in which Van Helsing is Reticent

2009-10-18T23:19:00.001-04:00

Wait, Van Helsing being reticent isn't enough to figure these out? I don't share quite the same sense of exasperation that 'kül and Infinite Detox have for these chapters in which Van Helsing continues to drag things out, but let's just say it's a good thing they finally chopped off Lucy's head and drove a stake through her, because any more would have been past my limit. That said, I cannot possibly hope to describe what has happened any better than ID, so I quote them here:

Van Helsing hand-feeding Seward from his little Dutch Pez-dispenser of clues every step of the goddamn way.

Yep, that sums it up perfectly. I guess upon retrospection, this whole section has been overly long. We've known what is happening for ages, as has Van Helsing. Was there any need for him to draw it out for so many chapters? I wonder how much of this has to do with the fact that we know Dracula is a vampire from popular culture. It would be fascinating to know what public reception of the novel was at the time of its release. Did the Victorians share in our exasperation? I feel that Elizabeth Miller could best answer my question, and if she's reading, please join in the comments!

But another factor that, I think, adds to our angst with Stoker's dramatic pacing is how riveting the opening chapters were. Remember that feeling of being shocked, terrified, creeped out, or otherwise that we all felt? Well we haven't had that in a while. We're in the exposition part of the book now, where some things have to be drawn out. Maybe this is unavoidable. I've been enjoying the references to Dan Brown, but remember: Dan Brown would never allow a lull like this. It's fast-paced all the time with him. Perhaps, in the end, we will see this as a point in Stoker's favor. And perhaps, we won't.

With that said, I'm glad to see the action picking up again. We learn some tricks of the de-vampiring trade, including stakes, garlic in the decapitated head, and Body of Christ Putty (tm). I'm fascinated by the fact that Van Helsing has a dispensation from the Pope to use communion wafers. This means the Vatican not only knows of the un-dead, but approves of Van Helsing hunting them (which, logically, they should). Could be an interesting twist later on, though I kind of doubt we get the Vatican involved (that would be too much like Dan Brown).

Anyhow, for these middling chapters, what do you think? Anything particularly strike your fancy? Let's hear it in the comments!

Dracula - Chapters 9-12: Why do Victorians hate garlic?

2009-10-13T22:54:00.001-04:00

The chapters in which Lucy is sick. Pretty easily summed up: Lucy is sick, Seward doesn't know what to do, he calls Van Helsing who does the right thing, people undo the right thing, Lucy gets worse. Now that we've got that out of the way, let's talk about a couple of things from these chapters.

Firstly, while I agree with Victoria over at VPO that it is not the smartest idea ever for Van Helsing to not tell anyone what he's doing, I think he has a reason. I'm absolutely positive that Van Helsing knows what is going on. He's got the garlic (which we know keeps away vampires), and he's giving Lucy much-needed blood while trying to make sure she isn't alone at night. So he's got this figured out. But I'm not sure if he's 100% certain yet, and I think that is where he derives his reticence to let anyone in on the secret. I've been trying all day to come up with a parallel, and I'm having trouble. Imagine that you think your mom is secretly an alien. But there is NO WAY you are telling anyone until you are positive. I mean, that just gets you laughed at. Also, it alerts the other aliens that you know. Once you have proof and a way to get rid of her slimy self, you act. In much the same way, Van Helsing is waiting until he has everything he needs to rid the greater London area of Vampires, and he isn't showing his cards in the meantime.

That said, it's leading to some awfully horrible things. Some of these circumstances just seem like something out of Comedy of Errors (or a good Looney Tunes cartoon), but they leave us horrified rather than humored. So it should come as no surprise that things finally work for the worse and Lucy is dealt a final blow from the escaped wolf who is in the company of the original Batman. As she is attended to by Seward, Van Helsing, and her third suitor, Quincey Morris, we get to hear of a couple interesting stories on the side.

Story One: Jonathan and Mina Harker are back in England! And they've come into a boatload of money! And Mina has decided to again start writing Lucy. She, sadly, doesn't realize it's too late. I wonder if we're going to get the journey from Budapest to Essex any time. That would be an awfully interesting tale, I think. Alternatively, it could be heinously boring.

Story Two: Renfield is still insane! Patrick Hennessey, the only man with enough letters after his name to rival Van Helsing, is looking after the asylum while Seward is off taking care of Lucy. He reports that Renfield has broken out again and gone chasing after two laborers carrying heavy boxes from Dracula's British estate. Now, we know that heavy boxes going to the estate had Dracula in them. What do you suppose these contained? My guess is maybe Dracula again, now that he has done in Lucy. Maybe that was his whole goal in coming. Renfield lends some credence to this when he shouts as he is being restrained:

I'll frustrate them! They shan't rob me! They shan't murder me by inches! I'll fight for my Lord and Master!

I think he is literally fighting for his "Lord and Master" here, and not just doing Dracula's bidding.

I always find it interesting how an author can keep my attention in books with multiple story-lines of equal importance. In Dracula, I'm always sad to see one go by the wayside, but after a bit, I almost forget about it and get just as engrossed in the next story. This really is one of the best page-turners I've read in quite some time, and if it weren't for Victoria keeping me on track, I surely would have gone ahead of schedule by now. What do you guys think? We're about halfway through: good book, great book, or terrible book? Let's hear it!

Dracula - Van Helsing rules

2009-10-10T15:10:00.000-04:00

Van Helsing freaking rocks, if for no other reason than this.

Letter, Abraham Van Helsing, M.D., D.Ph., D.Lit., Etc., Etc., to Dr Seward

I want that many letters behind my name. Dude is awesome, and we've barely met him yet.

Dracula - Chapters 7-8: Dracula stops by for tea

2009-10-08T21:36:00.000-04:00

So as promised to Victoria in the comments, let's talk about Lucy. Even after I've seen what her sleep-walking leads to, I still have questions. I understand her being awake and walking around after she gets bit by our good friend the Count, but why was she doing it before? My guess is that she was exposed to some other vampire at some other point, but where? So many unanswered questions.

And Mina. Oh Mina. Stupid Mina. After coming across Lucy in the churchyard, apparently in the embrace of some stranger, she prudently puts a cloak on her friend.

I fastened the shawl at her throat with a big safety-pin; but I must have been clumsy in my anxiety and pinched or pricked her with it, for by-and-by, when her breathing became quieter, she put her hand to her throat again and moaned.

The emphasis there was added by me. Mina, darling, two quick thoughts here. First, if she was moaning and putting her hand to her throat before you used the safety pin, it probably wasn't the safety pin. Secondly, if you stab someone with a safety pin, you're going to feel it. I understand that Stoker has to keep the suspense going, make sure his characters don't figure it all out before they're supposed to, but come on. She really is meant for Jonathan. Neither of them can see past the freaking obvious.

And we confirm our suspicions of Lucy have been Drac'd, when the Count is shipped to London and Lucy feels all better. Just when things seem to be settling down in the coastal town, Mina gets a letter from a nun about Jonathan. It's off to Hungary time for her! I can kind of understand the idea here, run to the side of your lover when they're ill. Makes sense. But that said, if he's insane, maybe you should take someone with you. No?

I should just note in passing, since I didn't cover it earlier, that log from the ship was absolutely chilling, and amazingly well-written. There are few things as great as a good nautical thriller. I mean, look at Der fliegende Holländer or Peter Grimes. Storms, the sea, and spooky ships are always an A+ combination.

Finally, we get to Renfield and Dr. Seward. So Renfield is really quite obviously a vampire, now that we've seen him refer to Dracula as Master. And Seward hasn't quite caught on yet. In his mind, "Master" is still in Renfield's head. It'll be interesting to see how Seward, the rational man that he is, comes to terms with Renfield being even weirder than previously thought. (Also: Seward is a chloroform addict! Neat! I didn't know we'd be dealing with high-end drugs in this novel.)

Alright, that's it for tonight. Any thoughts on the last two chapters, or the novel thus far? Let's have them in the comments!

Dracula - Chapters 3-6: Is everyone a vampire?

2009-10-07T07:46:00.002-04:00

So Jonathan Harker seems to be in a bit of a pickle (either dead in a ravine or being chased by angry Hungarians through Eastern Europe). Mina is dealing with death and tempests. Dr. Seward is helping a man upsize his pet collection. Where to begin?

Well, Harker seems the logical place, since he is where we left off. Our "hero" is told by the Count to continue to explore the locked up castle, but to make sure he doesn't fall asleep anywhere but his room. Harker is obviously new to this whole genre of Horror, because he decides to fall asleep in a room not his own as an act of rebellion. Now we get to see the Count's sweet side, as he saves Rip Van Winkle from becoming a drinking fountain for the three vampire women. But, before we get too comfortable with the image of Dracula as a savior, he tells the women that Harker is his for the eating, eventually. I was conflicted here. It seems obvious that the Count wants to take a bite out of Jonathan, but he seems almost genuinely concerned about him. Are we seeing a real side of the Count? We certainly have before, when he was busily and happily telling his family's history. So can we be led to believe that the Count is even slightly normal?

I'm going to quickly sum up the next bits, because this is already getting long and I haven't even gotten to Mina yet. Jonathan's explorations into Dracula's room give us the idea that maybe he's been a coin collector for a few hundred years now, and he likes a firm bed of topsoil. These scenes are unbelievably creepy, as is the scene in which Jonathan is seduced by the dancing dust in the moonlight. (Side note: Jonathan has obviously been warned of the dangers, and he obviously already has a healthy fear of both Count Dracula and his castle; so why is it that he always seems to be falling asleep? I mean, I understand that there is dust in the moonlight, and "oooo, dust!" Nevertheless, given the situation, if you are Jonathan Harker, don't you do everything in your power not to fall asleep outside your room? If I knew that three women, and possibly a Count were trying to make Cartoid Cocktails from me, I'd be darn sure I wasn't too busy watching moonlight theatre to get back into bed. Just saying.) One last note from the castle, we begin to see Stoker's (seeming) infatuation with the theme of life. Dracula regenerates his and this is part of what convinces Jonathan to flee. More on this in a bit.

We leave the castle with Jonathan (not knowing if we'll ever see him again) and head northwest to England where we meet a cast of characters guaranteed to keep this story creepy. For now, I'd like to focus on Dr. Seward, Mina, and the old fisherman. Seward's experiments with Renfield seem shocking today, but my guess is they were well within acceptable norms in Victorian times. But the truly interesting this here is Renfield's desire to upgrade his pet collection. First flys, then spiders, then sparrows, and finally the desire for a cat. After Seward learns that Renfield has eaten his sparrows (raw), he comes to a diagnosis of sorts for the madman:

My homicidal maniac is of a peculiar kind. I shall have to invent a new classification for him, and call him a zoophagous (life-eating) maniac; what he desires is to absorb as many lives as he can, and he has laid himself out to achieve it in a cumulative way. He gave many flies to one spider and many spiders to one bird, and then wanted a cat to eat the many birds. What would have been his later steps?

Renfield planned on ingesting life. We don't yet know his motives, but from what I know of vampire lore (which, granted is only loosely based on this novel, so my conjecture may be significantly off), this is the premise behind vampires. Are we, then, to believe that Renfield is some form of Vampire? That's certainly what I'm leading towards. Seward has (as do I), a sort of macabre fascination with what Renfield was going to do next.

Lastly, I'd like to turn to Mina and the incomprehensible fisherman (seriously, I'm all for dialects, but dear god reading notes to understand what someone is saying is frustrating). Here again we see a fixation with life or, rather, with the end of it. The fisherman makes light of death, only to reveal on the eve of what seems to be a massive storm, that it was only because he knows it will be coming for him soon. The imagery of Death (capitol D intended) here stands in such stark contrast to the earlier talk of gaining life. And at the same time, that too was centered around death. For Renfield to gain life, countless other things had to die. But the fisherman puts into words what I think will become the defining characteristic of the divide between vampires and normal people.

For life be, after all, only a waitin' for somethin' else than what we're doin': and death be all that we can rightly depend on.

The normal people accept Death (and death) as natural, and maybe even wanted. The vampires (at least Dracula) seem to be avoiding it at all costs. What for? Are they doomed to Hell and scared of their fate? Or, alternatively, is it just a desire to stay in the corporeal world? I'm leaning towards the former explanation, but I wouldn't be surprised to change my mind as the work goes on.

As a final question: is the Russian boat coming into the harbor Dracula? I say yes.

Alright, that's a mouthful. But that's what happens when I go four days without blogging. I'll try and be more punctual in the future so as to keep these to a more controllable size. Be sure to keep following along at VPO and IS:Drac as well! And let me know what you think in the comments.

Dracula - Chapters 1 & 2: What's with all the dogs?

2009-10-02T11:43:00.002-04:00

So I'm going to be blogging as I read Dracula along with the good folks of Infinite Summer (not to mention Views from the Page and the Oven). This is my first time reading the novel, so keep that in mind as you read. I'll put chapter 2 after the break for those of you who haven't gotten there yet.

Quite obviously, after the opening chapters, things are not looking good for our hero, Harker Johnathan. Oh wait, it's Johnathan Harker. Sorry, I keep thinking like the Transylvanians. But a few observations on Harker first. He seems to truly embody the Victorian spirit of "The Sun Never Sets on the British Empire." Take for instance his observations on the women he passes.

"The women looked pretty, except when you got near them"

At first I was drawn to thinking of Harker as the original Victorian brosef. But then as he talks more and more about the locals, I got a sense of condescension. It's never really overt, and he certainly never refers to people as anything so brusque as "savages," but there is a definite feeling of superiority to the locals. It comes across best when Harker talks about timetables:

"It seems to me that the further east you go the more unpunctual are the trains. What ought they to be in China?"

Everyone knows that Dracula is a Victorian novel, but I think it will be interesting to see what sort of impression I can glean of the Victorian mind at the time. How is their worldview reflected in the writing of Bram Stoker?

Another thing I noticed was the motif of dogs. In the first chapter alone, we get 15 mentions of "dog" or "wolves," and a "werewolf." Now, this is probably just a misconception on my part, but I've never associated the story of Dracula with dogs; bats were always the animal I had in mind. I'm going to be keeping an eye open as I keep reading, because I get the feeling that dogs (wild or domestic) are going to become a theme.

Chapter 2 sees Harker entering the castle and becoming acquainted with Count Dracula, who we learn has bought property (sight unseen) in London. Harker has apparently traveled (as a clerk to a solicitor, though he has since obtained status as a full solicitor) to finalize the paperwork needed for the real estate transaction. Seems like a pretty boring premise for a horror story. Luckily, Stoker doesn't bore us with details of how the paperwork happened, but instead gets right down to the nitty-gritty of scaring the beejeezus out of us. Dracula is a terrifying man: proper in his manners, but ready to lunge at Johnathan when our hero cuts himself shaving. We already see some of the blood lust that Dracula is typically known for in this early chapter.

Finally, one last thing I noted. Dracula learned about England in much the same way that Stoker learned about Transylvania: through books. Stoker had never been to Transylvania and yet he paints a vivid picture of the Carpathians due to his extensive research. Dracula, in much the same way, has learned English and seems to have a good grasp of English mannerisms and the like from nothing more than magazines, literature, and a surprising array of pedantic books covering the minutiae of London life. It's an interesting parallel between character and author.

Anyways, what are your thoughts on the opening chapters?

Toys for the bibliophile

2009-09-30T17:22:00.000-04:00

Alright, I really want a DC-area bookstore to get one of these, like, yesterday. It's a new machine that can produce a library-quality paperback book in about four minutes. Currently, the soon-to-be-renamed Espresso has a fairly limited catalog (but it does have the Google books collection), but could lead to cheaper and more readily accessible books. The prices that the Harvard Bookstore are offering seem a tad bit high, especially when the On Demand Books website mentions that "Production cost is a penny a page and minimal human intervention is required for operation."

Nevertheless, this machine could have a huge impact on making out-of-print books available again. If you can have the choice between printing a new copy of an out-of-print book, or searching for a used copy for what may be a higher price, the decision seems easy. But more importantly, I think, is what we are starting to see in the world of books. With E-Readers soaring in popularity, and the means to read Public Domain books online, we are beginning to see the decommodification of the book as an object.

It's not going to be very long before we no longer prize having the actual object and merely want the content instead. And before the traditionalists have the chance to howl at me for blasphemy, look at what has happened in the world of music. As mp3s were introduced, people clamored that sound quality was poor and you lost the connection with actual albums. Well, it appears that iTunes and the like are the way of the future, and most of the complaints about missing the tangible are gone. It makes sense that sound was so easily adapted, because the process of consumption remains the same, regardless of the media on which the product is distributed. However, with books, we have to find a way to serve the product that is amenable to everyone.

The Espresso keeps with the standard format of giving us bound paper, but I think it will help to devalue the idea of having your own copy. Lose a copy of Three Musketeers? Who cares?! You can print a new one down the street! Additionally, if the publishing world embraces the idea, it will mean bookstores no longer have to keep massive stock on hand to satisfy all possible needs. Instead, we could see bookstores reduced to ATM-esque kiosks.

With all of this said, I'm not sure how I feel about the possibilities of the Espresso. Sure, it's a GREAT toy, and a really awesome concept. But there is no feeling quite like browsing around a book store. I know I can get anything I want on Amazon, but I still go to brick-and-mortar stores so I get the opportunity to browse and perhaps be taken by a whim. It's one of the joys of being a reader. I'm afraid to lose that, because it means taking fewer chances, and finding fewer surprises. So while I encourage the idea behind the Espresso, I am leery of implications it could have. What are your thoughts?

Dracula: Infinite Summer Style

2009-09-29T15:15:00.000-04:00

http://infinitesummer.org/dracula/You may have heard of the reading craze that swept the nation this summer: Infinite Summer, an online community reading David Foster Wallace's doorstop Infinite Jest. Victoria, over at Views from the Page and the Oven, partook and was almost inspiration enough for me to do the same. But, in the end, I couldn't bring myself to tackle the work when I had so many other things I wanted to read.

Infinite Summer: Dracula

Well, luckily for me, the gang at Infinite Summer had such a good time that they decided to pick another book to read after Summer was over (or was it ever really over, being infinite and all). They've chosen the considerably less hefty, and significantly less post-modern Dracula by Bram Stoker. It's a fairly manageable reading schedule spread out over the month of October, and fear not, you don't even have to buy a copy! As announced today, they will be having Jonathan McNicol provide a newly typeset version of the Public Domain work in PDF installments over the course of the project. Otherwise, you can pick up a copy on the cheap from pretty much anywhere. So come and join. You should be able to read without putting down your other books. I know I will be multitasking American Prometheus, The Ground Beneath Her Feet (more on that later), and Dracula.

Irony is good for the diet

2009-09-22T15:19:00.000-04:00

After my little rant about Satchel (brief review: a horrible book by a man who at times seems to know nothing about baseball, especially advanced statistical metrics), I've dived into another biography. In a wonderful turn of events, however, this one is magnificent already. The book is American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin. I'm sure I'll write more about it later, but I had to post one little delicious bit of irony I came across.

A little back story. As I may have mentioned before, I'm a graduate student in music history at UMD. This being my second year of the MA program, I have to write a thesis, and I've chosen to study John Adams' opera Doctor Atomic. It's the story of Oppenheimer in the days leading up to the first test of the atomic bomb in Los Alamos, NM. If you have a chance to see or hear it, do so, as it is a really stunning work and one that I think is going to carve itself a place in the permanent repertoire of opera companies around the world.

With that said, I came across this little bit (page 31 of the paperback edition) that makes me smile at the fantastic irony of Adams' work.

The one thing Boyd and Oppenheimer did not have in common was music. "I was very fond of music," Boyd recalled, "but once a year he would go to an opera, with me and Bernheim usually, and he'd leave after the first act. He just couldn't take any more." Herbert Smith had also noticed this peculiarity, and once said to Robert, "You're the only physicist I've ever known who wasn't also musical."

I wonder what Oppie would think of the opera about him?

The Trouble with Biographies

2009-07-28T15:26:00.003-04:00

I went to the library a couple weeks ago and saw a copy of Larry Tye's new biography Satchel sitting on the new book shelves. It being the middle of summer and the Mariners having not played themselves out of contention yet (those were the days), I decided a baseball book would be perfect. Now, I knew almost nothing about Satchel Paige coming into the book aside from the fact that he was an exceptionally good pitcher.

Now, 123 pages into the book, I'm wondering why I got it in the first place. I mean, it's certainly not a bad book, I just can't bring myself to be that invested in it. Tye does a fine job depicting the life of Paige (though there is some chronological jumping that infuriates me, more on that when I review the book), but it just isn't amazing. And it's made me remember that in general, I don't really like biographies. (That's a little bit weird for a music historian, right?)

Why not? They can have amazing subjects (who doesn't want to know more about Einstein? FDR? Frida Kahlo?) and can be written by fantastic authors. But even the most amazing lives often lack the narrative drive that makes great works of literature so amazing. We're all used to digesting the life of George Washington as a series of bullet-point facts. Unless a biography really elaborates on that, you might as well read the wiki article.

This shouldn't be construed as me saying "There are no good biographies!" Because there are, they're just very rare. I loved the David McCullough biography of John Adams because it showed the founding father in an intensely personal life. The use of his letters with Abigail made for some heart-rending moments, some truly literary moments.

And that's what I think it boils down to, biography lacks the emotional and narrative drive of great literature. Learning facts for bar trivia is great (in 1935 Satchel Paige went 29-2 with 321 strikeouts to only 16 walks... mind blowing), it doesn't make for the most compelling reading. How often do you sit down with your college text books for a nice afternoon? I guess I just have to remember this the next time a glossy cover of a biography yells at me from the shelves in the library.

All the King's Men, review

2009-07-24T14:27:00.004-04:00

Well hello there blog. Fancy meeting you here. I've recently started running, something I despise. Yet, i am forcing myself to do it three times a week. It's about time I started doing that with this blog, something I do not despise. So I figured I'd get back with a quick review of Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men.

As I have blubbered before, the prose was gorgeous. I have only rarely come across such simply beautiful writing as this. But, the story should not be overshadowed. What sets out to ostensibly be the story of the politician Willie Talos becomes the story of his man Jack Burden. What a character Burden becomes. For the majority of the book, I thought he was the most despicable protagonist I had ever found myself reading about. Yet in the end, when we find that he tried to give the Judge a way out, I found myself feeling sympathetic for Jack. Finally, he was a character with whom I could empathize!

The assassination of Willie took me by surprise, but it retrospect, it shouldn't have. Talos was a man far too ambitious, one who seemed from the beginning doomed to fall back to the earth, brought down not by the sun but rather by his own hubris. Despite the hubris, however, Talos became something more than just a slime ball. Certainly, Talos embodied everything that is deplorable about politics: mud slinging, blackmail, cronyism, etc.

But he had ambitions for the greater good. Ambitions that were surprisingly relevant even today: better roads, better use of money in an economic depression, and free health care for all residents. He used his sleeze towards the greater good, but it was destined to come back for him. The paralyzing of his son was really the fatal blow to Talos, and the gunshots of Adam Stanton were merely Willie's death made real.

Warren's slow change of characters through the book made for excellent reading. Nothing seemed to be in stasis, and constantly evolving characters helps any book be good. I can safely recommend this book to anyone really. It strikes me, as cliched as this sounds, as the nearest I've ever come to the "great American novel." Is it the best American novel? Certainly not. But it encompasses so much of what has made the United States the nation that it is: backwater dealings of seemingly little import that shape the states and country as a whole.

All the Kings Men, the first 100 Pages

2009-07-08T15:59:00.003-04:00

So Warren is still writing some of the most beautiful prose I've ever read. Take for instance this phrase from a meeting in which time moved inexorably:

...the clock in the corner, a big grandfather's clock, offered us the slow, small, individual pellets of time.

Yet in addition to the continued splendor of Warren's writing, we're getting plot development. I've yet to see the recently-made movie based on the book, but it's easy to understand how the inspiration came about. It's a classic story told from the present in the vein of Forrest Gump. The first chapter (72 pages) outlines the "now" of the story. Willie Talos, governor, is in the middle of a fight to nominate a senator. One of his long-time backers has switched sides, and Talos takes the narrator, Jack Burden, to convince the Judge to come back, or else. It's really the dirty side of politics. After the encounter, Jack says that eventually everything "The Boss" (Talos) wanted was accomplished. He found the dirt on the Judge, the only father-figure he ever had. But before we get to that (assuming we eventually do), he takes us back to the beginning of Talos' career.

But the most intriguing part of it all is how Jack manages to make both himself and The Boss into imminently loathsome characters. Generally, one does not come across such odious protagonists, and yet ten pages into the second chapter and I've forgotten (or at least pushed to the back of my mind) the reprehensible actions of the two in chapter one.

What I am still trying to figure out is whether these characters are easy to forgive because back-stabbing is such an ingrained part of American politics, or if it's because of the way that Warren writes. Nevertheless, the story is becoming fascinating, and the writing remains superb. I'll keep updating as I keep reading. If you've read the book, let me hear your say in the comments!

Newsweek makes a Top 100 List

2009-07-06T14:38:00.003-04:00

Back from a long and indulgent weekend. I didn't read too much as my girlfriend got a new gaming system for her birthday. Alas, c'est la wii.

Anyhow, as a dip back into the blogging pool, I thought I'd point out Newsweek's Top 100 book list. It is a compilation of lists, or as they describe it, "It's a list of lists — a meta-list." I haven't read as many in the Top 20 as I should have, but judging from what I know of them (perception of those I haven't, and first-hand knowledge of those I have) it's pretty hard to argue with this. I'm considering tackling this list, rather than the behemoth that is 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. My problem with the latter is that there are just a huge number of books there that don't interest me at all. And while reading 20 or so books that don't immediately interest me to get a well-rounded knowledge based on a reasonable list of books (Newsweek) doesn't bother me, reading a few hundred does.

I'll see if I can't make a nice little usable spreadsheet for the Newsweek list for those that want to download it. There is something about a "mere" 100 books that seems undaunting enough to be accomplished. Though the inclusion of War and Peace and Ulysses in the top 10 is worrisome.

Look for my own top 10 list sometime in the next week. It won't be a "greatest ever," but rather it will be my favorites. I've just gotta give it some thought. And in the meantime, what are your thoughts on the Newsweek list?

Vitriolic, arsenical green

2009-07-02T15:05:00.004-04:00

I'm only 8 pages into it, but I need to recommend that everyone go read the first 4 or 5 pages of Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men. Those few pages contain some of the most beautiful writing I've ever come across. Brace yourself for some coarse language (racial epithets), but the one example that really stood out was in the first paragraph. The context: talking about being hypnotized by the road and then driving off it:

Then a nigger chopping cotton a mile away, he'll look up and see the little column of black smoke standing up above the vitriolic, arsenical green of the cotton rows, and up against the violent, metallic, throbbing blue of the sky.

Warren was the United States' first Poet Laureate, so it's no surprise that he can write with such vivid imagery. But it still caught me off guard. I've read some good books lately, but nothing that grabs the imagination and the mental ear quite like this. You can write a good story, and you can write well. I can't judge the story yet, but Warren already has the writing well part solidified in the first page.

It really reminds you that writing is an art, and at times it can be just as arresting as gazing upon Church's Niagra at the Corcoran, or hearing the slow movement of Debussy's string quartet. Hopefully I'll come across more of this as I write the blog, but it seems fitting that I should come across such a fine example of the way in which writing can be the most vivid of arts just as I begin to collect in writing my thoughts on writing.

I will keep updating as I keep reading. And certainly there will be some discussion of The Three Musketeers soon.

A hearty welcome

2009-07-01T22:48:00.002-04:00

Welcome to Metro Marginalia, the attempt of a 20-something grad student in music history to read outside his field. I've recently moved into a new apartment, sans TV, and have reacquainted myself with my love of reading. It's amazing how much more reading I can get done when I'm not watching SportsCenter.

"Blah blah, self important grad student. But what will you be writing about?" you ask. Well, I'm not entirely sure. I assume I'll put some discussion of the books I am currently reading or have recently read. I'll have talk of book news that strikes me as interesting (disclosure: I am not a publishing news junkie, so it'll just be stuff I happen to catch). I'll write about some of my all-time favorites.

And on that note, let me put it out there so you can feel free to argue with me right away. My all-time favorite book is Joseph Heller's Catch-22. I can't remember ever laughing so hard at a book that moved me so much. It was shocking at the time, and it remains so to this day. Maybe that's one thing I'll do: a re-reading of Catch-22, with commentary!

Alright, I'll wrap it up. Expect a post about The Three Musketeers soon. I just finished it last week, and I freaking loved it. I hope you'll join me in the comments for some good discussion. Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you enjoy.