Archive for 'Books & Writers'
Ghost Wars
At Live From Silver City Avelino takes a look at Steve Coll’s Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. One-third of the way through, and Avelino is already recommending the book.
“I’m incredibly impressed with Ghost Wars. It’s an elaborate, if chilling, history of the events leading up to some of the most important events in our lifetimes.”
He also recommends Jon Krakauer’s Where Men Win Glory, the story of Pat Tillman and the coverup.
“Like other Krakauer books, the text is engaging and (at least to me) moving.”
Follow the link above and read more of what Avelino has to say about these two books. He got me interested.
Breakfast at the Road Runner Cafe
A good New Mexico poem today at The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor.
Best line of the day
“I read omnivorously, I always have, my entire life. I would rather be dead than not read. So, there’s always time for that. I read while I eat, and our whole family did. We all had very bad manners at the table. All of our books are stained with spaghetti sauce, and that sort of thing.”
E. Annie Proulx, who turns 75 today, from a worth-reading profile at The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor.
Books are a mystery to me
Nora found that reading about Raymond Chandler earlier — today is his birthday — made her reminisce. Fortunately she shared her book-loving memories with us.
The basement of my childhood home was lined with plank boards and cinderblocks (painted white so they didn’t look quite as cinderblock-y) to house all of the books that Dad and Priscilla owned. Periodically, I would poke through their collection looking for something new to read. One day, and I can’t remember how old I was at the time, I stumbled across my father’s mystery books. I’m pretty certain that my first read was a Nero Wolfe novel, and I quickly made my way through Rex Stout, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ross Macdonald, and John D. MacDonald. In middle school, I decided to expand the collection and went on a hunt for more Nero Wolfe. In high school, I focused on Travis McGee. In college, eBay was my friend and I found lots more to read.
I have a few memories that make me smile when I think of my mystery collection:
- Driving cross-country with a girlfriend in 2001. She was bored with the drive itself, so I passed her one of the Lew Archer books. She read it quickly and asked for more.
- Going home from work one extremely rainy night in DC. It was POURING. I exited the subway train, my head buried in Condominium (John D. MacDonald). Just as I approached the escalators to head up to the street, I heard the thunder boom and saw a huge lightning strike above me. I had reached a particularly climatic part of the book and the storm sounds scared the living daylights out of me. Terrified, but wanting to read more, I decided to wait out the weather. I stood in the Metro station for another hour and read. Eventually my roommate showed up and asked me what I was doing. I hadn’t realized how much time had passed. At that point, I tucked my book in my bag and the two of us ran home as fast as we could. (Didn’t do much good — we were soaked when we got home!)
- When Jason and I first moved to Denver, I found a fun used bookstore in the Highlands. I picked up 5 or 6 new-to-me mysteries and read them all right away.
And of course, my favorite part of this story is that my parents always told me that I was named after Nora Charles from The Thin Man. Boy, I would have been Nick. Dog, I would have been Asta. 
Video games 13,823, Huck Finn 8,088
Summer Chills: The Season’s Best Mystery Reads
Even if you are not among the twenty-seven million readers worldwide who bought the books in Stieg Larsson’s posthumously published Millennium trilogy, you’ve probably heard enough talk about “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” to know that readers are in the mood for mysteries this summer. As a former Agatha Christie addict who once subjected her mother to the nonstop playing of the “Murder in Mesopotamia” audio book during a road trip to Vermont, I’ve found that the Larsson craze has reawakened my love for mysteries. In search of some solid mystery recommendations for my summer reading list, I recently sought out Kizmin Reeves, one of the three owners of Partners & Crime, the venerable mystery-and-crime bookstore in Greenwich Village.
Store policy forbids employees from recommending books they haven’t read. This is no challenge for Reeves, who estimates that she reads ten mystery novels a week. Dressed all in black and fitted with a pin that read “I am not a serial killer” (it’s the title of a book), Reeves walked me around her store and pointed out some great summer reads.
The Book Bench : The New Yorker has the recommendations.
“To Kill a Mockingbird” at Fifty
“To Kill a Mockingbird” might just be more popular than the Bible, Mary McDonagh Murphy suggests in the introductory chapter to her new book “Scout, Atticus & Boo: A Celebration of Fifty Years of To Kill a Mockingbird.” Murphy writes:
Fifty years after its publication, it sells nearly a million copies every year—hundreds of thousands more than “The Catcher in the Rye,” “The Great Gatsby” or “Of Mice and Men,” American classics that are staples of high school classrooms. No other twentieth-century American novel is more widely read. Even British librarians, who were polled in 2006 and asked, “Which book should every adult read before they die?” voted “To Kill a Mockingbird” number one. The Bible was number two.
If you love the book, you’ll want to read this whole essay. If you don’t love the book, WTF.
“Reading ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ is something millions of us have in common,” Murphy writes, “and yet there is nothing common about the experience.”
Tweet! Tweet! Tweet!
Above, Roger Ebert’s example of great writing in 140 characters.
Ebert has other fine examples.
He also had this. Get it? Rockin’ Robin. Tweet! Tweet! Tweet! For my part, I just marvel at Michael.
Best line of the other day I forgot to post
“I started the Sarah Vowell book on the plane yesterday and I am almost done with it. I LOVE it. I want to go find her and be best friends with her.”
Jill reporting from Grand Cayman regarding Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation
The Girl Trilogy
I’ve read all three Stieg Larsson books since I began the first last Saturday afternoon. (The third I read on my iPhone using the Kindle app.)
Two kept me up to after one. The third kept me up to 2:30 this morning. I finished it early this afternoon.
If you like crime, detective, police procedural, espionage books you should like these.
Read them in order. It’s essential.
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
This Sunday’s New York Times Book Review discusses the Girl Trilogy.
Do NOT read the review unless you have read the second book! There is a warning in the review, but there is an unbelievable spoiler.
Amazing and thoughtless and unnecessary.
The three books should be read in order.
A young woman is keeping me up nights
Her name is Lisbeth Salander.
I bought The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Monday I ordered the second book, The Girl Who Played with Fire
I’ll be ordering the third book, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
If you like crime thrillers with fascinating characters, complex plots and a feminist bent, you’ll want to spend nights with Lisbeth Salander too, tattoos and all.
The Ox-Bow Incident
One of my very favorite western novels is The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark. Everyone should read it.
And one of my very favorite western movies is The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) with Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Anthony Quinn, Harry Morgan and many others. I watch it every so often, including again this evening. The film has been selected for the National Film Registry as a “cultural, artistic and/or historical treasure.” But beyond that, it is a pleasure to watch.
Tonight I streamed the film from Netflix via my Wii. (The Wii Netflix disk arrived just today.) Of course, it’s a 67-year-old black and white film, but the streaming by Wii worked well.
All Wiis have built-in wireless capability.
The single mother’s manifesto
My god, I do love this woman.
J.K. Rowling writes about the British election. An excerpt:
Nobody who has ever experienced the reality of poverty could say “it’s not the money, it’s the message”. When your flat has been broken into, and you cannot afford a locksmith, it is the money. When you are two pence short of a tin of baked beans, and your child is hungry, it is the money. When you find yourself contemplating shoplifting to get nappies, it is the money. If Mr Cameron’s only practical advice to women living in poverty, the sole carers of their children, is “get married, and we’ll give you £150”, he reveals himself to be completely ignorant of their true situation.
How many prospective husbands did I ever meet, when I was the single mother of a baby, unable to work, stuck inside my flat, night after night, with barely enough money for life’s necessities? Should I have proposed to the youth who broke in through my kitchen window at 3am? Half a billion pounds, to send a message — would it not be more cost-effective, more personal, to send all the lower-income married people flowers?
Go read it all. It’s time well spent.
Thanks to Avelino for the link.
Cormac McCarthy doesn’t know the American south-west
Christine Granados thinks despite what he has said, plenty of writers before Cormac McCarthy had written about this region, and many did so a lot better. An excerpt:
Had George Sessions Perry or Leslie Marmon Silko been quoted as saying, “I moved to the north-east because I knew no one had ever written about it,” the literary establishment would have laughed and rained intellectual expletives upon them. However, when Rhode Island-born and Tennessee-reared McCarthy stated last year in the Wall Street Journal that he moved to the south-west because “he knew no one had ever written about it”, not one voice was raised. McCarthy’s misinformation was treated as fact and as if writers such as Perry, Katherine Anne Porter, O Henry, J Frank Dobie, John Graves, Larry McMurtry, and Elmer Kelton did not exist.
His misstatement in the Journal took me back to a college course I took where All The Pretty Horses was touted as one of the best works of south-western US literature. But I didn’t understand what was so special about the stereotypical John Grady Cole, a silent 16-year-old ranch-hand orphan from Texas who spoke Spanish and fell in love with the Mexican Americans and Mexicans he encountered on both sides of the border – yet treated them as colourful props and scenery by relegating them to the role of minor characters in the novel. I won’t discuss the stereotypes and archetypes he used for “them darkies” in his book.
How to Write in 700 Easy Lessons
Richard Bausch makes the case against writing manuals. An excerpt:
The trouble of course is that a good book is not something you can put together like a model airplane. It does not lend itself to that kind of instruction. Every day books are published that contain no real artfulness in the lines, books made up of clichés and limp prose, stupid stories offering nothing but high concept and plot—or supra-literary books that shut out even a serious reader in the name of assertions about the right of an author to be dull for a good cause. (No matter how serious a book is, if it is not entertaining, it is a failure.) I’m not talking about the books we write or publish in the attempt to answer the need for entertainment at whatever level one chooses. And I have no quarrel with the genres, because to help people escape from life is harmless, and honorable enough, and in its way just as valuable as helping them escape into it.
Books ahoy!
“Given that men have sailed the seas for thousands of years, it’s perhaps surprising how few great works of literature have been inspired by the seafaring life. Sailing may have promised adventure, but in reality it was a dangerous profession that attracted only the toughest, few of whom were equipped with a talent for writing. Their yarns remained fixed in the oral tradition, and in general, writers directed their attention elsewhere. But the exceptions are majestic.”
Best ‘other than that how did you like the book’ line of the day
“Mr. Martel’s new book, “Beatrice and Virgil,” unfortunately, is every bit as misconceived and offensive as his earlier book was fetching.”
Mr. Martel’s earlier book was Life of Pi.
War Dances
“War Dances” by novelist Sherman Alexie has won the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the organizers announced Tuesday.
The prestigious annual award, presented by the Washington-based PEN/Faulkner Foundation, was given to Alexie because of his book’s breadth of topics and innovative style, judges said. “War Dances” consists of short stories interspersed with poems.
“That book was the one we all liked immediately,” said Kyoko Mori, one of the three judges. “There was something special about the range of characters. It was like watching a dance. I liked how some of the characters were unlikable but compelling.”
The other finalists were Barbara Kingsolver, Lorraine M. Lopez, Lorrie Moore and Colson Whitehead.
The Great Derangement
I’ve read Matt Taibbi’s The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion over the past few days. Though dated by being researched and written in 2006 and 2007 (that is, before the 2008 election), it’s still a provocative and useful look at America.
Taibbi’s thesis is that many Americans — reacting to war, a government increasingly run for the financial gain of the few, and media meaninglessness — have detached from reality. He embedded in two of those groups — Christian end-of-the-worlders and 9-11 truthers. His description of both the religious and conspiracy fanatics is amusing and frightening.
Best line of the day
“Every reader of ‘The Cat in the Hat’ will feel that the story revolves around a piece of withheld information: what private demons or desires compelled this mother to leave two young children at home all day, with the front door unlocked, under the supervision of a fish?”
Louis Menand, “Cat People” in The New Yorker (2002). Today is Theodor Geisel’s — aka Dr. Seuss — 106th birthday. Menand has a nice profile of the writer. Seuss was Geisel’s mother’s maiden name.
Roger Ebert
Will Leitch tells his Roger Ebert Story.
Leitch describes an Ebert who is just as classy as we fans want to believe he is. A terrific profile.
Drive
Malcolm Gladwell has selected the New Yorker book-of-the-month for March. It’s Daniel Pink’s Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
But Pink follows though on their implications in a way that is provocative and fascinating. The way we structure organizations and innovation, after all, almost always assumes that the prospect of financial reward is the prime human motivator. We think that the more we pay people, the better results we’ll get. But what if that isn’t true? What the research shows, instead, is that the great wellspring of creativity is intrinsic motivation—that is, I do my best work for personal rewards (out of love or intellectual fulfillment) and not external motivation (money).
Flags of Our Fathers
As I mentioned in a comment to yesterday’s post on the flag-raising on Iwo Jima, I decided to read James Bradley’s Flags of Our Fathers
I’m about three-quarters of the way through the book — including the flag raising, which was on day five of the 35-day battle. I highly recommend Bradley’s book if you have any interest in this event, the Marines, World War II or military history. Bradley tells the story of the six flag-raisers and the battle. Bradley’s father was one of the six in the photograph, a Navy medic and the longest-surviving of the six, three of whom died later in the battle on Iwo Jima. Altogether 6,821 Americans were killed and another 19,217 wounded.
EIght-four marines were awarded the Medal of Honor during World War II. Twenty-seven were for action on Iwo Jima.
Marine Sergeant Bill Genaust had a movie camera that day. This film — and the famous photograph — were taken when the second, a replacement flag was raised. Secretary of Navy James Forrestal (present at the battle) requested the first flag that had been raised 90 minutes earlier to the cheers of the marines on the beaches below. A battalion commander sent up a second, much larger flag. The first was taken down as the second was raised — but the first flag was stored in the battalion safe, not given to Forrestal. It, the significant but less famous flag, is now on display at the Marine Museum. The iconic flag seen here was, according to Bradley, shredded by the wind after a few weeks.
Thanks to Jill for pointing me in the right direction.
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