The Unbearable Lightness of Being

I recently met two different people, who upon seeing me reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being, remarked that it is one of their favorite books. It is a very complex philosophical book with an eliptical plot. I won't try to explain the plot other than to say the events of the story take place during the time of the Prague Spring (the period of cultural liberalization in Czechoslovakia in 1968). The story is quite erotic. The protagonist, who I believe is in his early 40s, has slept with over 200 women in his lifetime. He shags a fair number of these women during the course of the book. Kundera's writing reminded me of Nabakov. As good as this book is, I would not say it is among my favorites. See the movie instead.

Two Dystopian Visions

I recently read Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart. This novel takes place in NY and Europe in the not too distant future and paints a pretty dark picture of where American values are heading. The US is in sharp economic decline and gets bought out (literally) by the new powers, China, Saudi Arabia and Norway (Norway? really?) In Shteyngart's vision, the social networking/information technology trend has gotten to the point where no information about each citizen is private any longer. Everyone has IPhone-like devices called apparats. Information about each person, ranging from credit score to triglyceride levels, is available to anyone and everyone instantaneously. Your credit score flashes from "credit poles" as you walk past them. The enemies of the state are not terrorists or communists, but rather, Low Net Worth Individuals. The book is satire and the premise is over the top. However, it is close enough to the top that you can imagine all these things coming to pass. This is the true brilliance of this book. Shteyngart is making a scathing comment about the surrendering of our privacy and obsession with social status and possessions. It is heavy stuff, but his use of humor keeps things from bogging down and getting sanctimonious. I give this hipper-than-thou tome three out of four stars.

The other book I recently finished is the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. It is a teen novel (with no wizards or vampires). I mentioned this book in a prior entry so I won't say much more about this book except that I highly recommend it to fans of science fiction. If you liked A Wrinkle in Time as a kid (or adult), you will like this book and will want to read the two sequels.

I participated in a book discussion of the Hunger Games with a number of adults and pre-teens. The comments and observations from the children were truly fascinating. They really understood some of the nuances that lay beneath the surface of the story.

She Blinded Me with Science

The other day, my friend Pamela told me that she is reading Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man for one of her classes. I thought I had read it, but it turns out the book I actually read was Carl Sagan's The Dragons of Eden. My confusion was because the books covered similar topics (the evolution of human intelligence) and were published close in time.

I confess, I am kind of a science geek. I read science magazines, newspaper articles and books with great interest. Recently, I read the nearly 600 page biography of Einstein by Walter Isaacson. It was totally riveting, both the personal and the science. What Issacson's book does well is show how scientific knowledge (and the pursuit of it) fits into the broader context of history and culture. Einstein's theories literally changed the world. They ushered in the atomic age and shifted our understanding of the basic laws of nature. The thing that people don't remember is that he spent decades in a fruitless quest for a grand unified theory bridging the very large (cosmology) and the very small (quantum physics). That quest still continues by others. He also rejected much of the new physics that followed his revolutionary ideas of the first two decades of the 20th century. He was a true celebrity in the way that say a Bill Clinton is. He attracted a crowd wherever he went and people clambered to hear him speak.

Carl Sagan was like that for me when I was a teenager. His books, and particularly, his TV show Cosmos really opened my eyes to the wonder of the universe and helped me become a critical thinker. Sagan really showed me the romantic nature of science. My other hero during these years was Arthur C. Clarke, the science fiction writer. When I was 15 years old, I joined an organization called the Planetary Society. All you had to due was pay annual dues, and you were in. One day, they sponsored a lecture by Carl Sagan. My mon and I attended the lecture. Seated in the front row was none other that Arthur C. Clarke. The man lived in Sri Lanka, but here he was in NYC, not but 50 feet away. Before the lecture started, many of the audience members queued up and got Mr. Clarke's autograph. I didn't have anything for him to sign, so I did not get in the line. I have always wished that I would have gotten in line and simply shaken his hand and thanked him for all the great stories. You don't often get a chance to thank your heroes, and to this day, I wish I had. Isaac Asimov was there too, but I didn't care about him in those days.

The Young Adult Novel

I host an annual book discussion at the local community garden where I volunteer. This year, I decided to pick The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. This is a young adult novel that is all the range among the tween set and beyond. I think many adults are put off by the young adult novel, but they can be great books that are enjoyed by all ages. For example, I recently reread A Wrinkle in Time by Medeline L'Engle. I would rate that a great novel without qualification.

The Hunger Games presents a post-apocalyptic future where the country is divided into a number of districts. Each district has to put forth children to do battle in a gladiator ring. The plot points and the themes are totally up my alley. My hope for this novel is that, like Animal Farm or Lord of the Flies, the conceit of the plot is merely a launching pad to explore deeper truths. We shall see whether this novel is simply this year's fad, or whether it resonates enough to be remebered and read by future generations. Stay tuned.

Gilead

On Saturday, I finished reading Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. The novel takes place in 1956 in a small town in Iowa. The conceit of the book is that it is a long letter written by a 76 year old Calvinist pastor (John Ames) to his young son. John Ames is in the last stages of heart disease and will not be around to teach his son the moral lessons that a father would impart to a child over time. In the letter, written over a period of several weeks, Ames writes to his son about his own family history. Ames' grandfather, a young man living in Maine in the 1830s, had a vision of Christ bound in chains. He decided to move to Kansas, which was still a territory, in order to fight for Kansas' admittance into the Union as a free state. Ames' grandfather's tactics in the support of abolition includes violence. This is a hell of a thing, considering that the grandfather is a preacher himself. Ames' letter to his son continues the story of his grandfather, his father and that of his best friend's wayard son, who has returned home after being away for many years. The book is a lyrical exploration of the concepts of forgiveness, faith and grace. The story of the prodigal son permeates throughout the book.

When Ames sets to telling the story of his family, the book is really engaging. However, the more philosophical musings can bog down the reading. This is not a quick read, but it is worthwhile.

Birthday Reflections

I just added about two thousand pages to the great unread collection of books that I hope to eventually get to. This week, I completed another revolution around the sun. In recognition of this, Amy presented me with two books: 1) Christianity, The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch and 2) 2666 by Roberto Bolano. I am very excited to receive these books. The Christianity book was favorably reviewed in the NY Times Book Review section. The history of Christianity is essentially the history of western civilization. There are serious gaps in my historical knowledge that I am interested in discovering: what was it like for the early Christians to be persecuted by the Romans? What led to the schism between the eastern and western churches? What specifically happened during the crusades? These issues are relevant today as we see people of faith being persecuted around the world and we see people of faith practicing intolerance and persecution. This book will likely sit on my bedside table and take a while to finish. I have to finish the other book on my bedside first, The Cuba Reader. As for 2666 (see my post from April), I am really looking forward to reading this novel. I will start it immediately after finishing Gilead (and Hyperion and The Lost Symbol).

I have come to the point in my life where I realize that I will not be able to read all the books that I plan to. There is a serious backlog of books I want to read and I keep adding to it. But that's OK. I am simply going to focus on enjoying the books that I do read. It's not like I win a prize at the end. That being said, I want to make every choice count. If I am not enjoying a book, I will drop it and move on.

Dan Brown, (Not So) Guilty Pleasure

About 5 years ago, I started a book club at work with the idea that we would read bestsellers of the potboiler variety. I had been in a book club that read a lot of different things, but most of what we read was literary/artsy/highbrow. I wanted to read books that were similar to the types of books that were popular when I was a kid: Jaws, The Godfather, The Boys from Brazil, Looking for Mr. Goodbar; books that didn't necessarily have anything profound to say, but were riveting pageturners.

The first selection for this office book club was The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown. This was the most popular book on the planet at the time. Everyone had read it or was reading it. Is there anyone who hasn't read it? The story is bereft of any kind of literary ambitions, but boy what a hell of a ride! The story grabs you from the first chapter and doesn't let go. It is a masterful blend of history / religion / suspense / mystery. Yes, it almost reads like a movie, and, incidentally, it was much better than the movie version that later came out.

Alas, the great potboiler experiment did not last. The next office book club selection was The Kite Runner. No one wanted to read John Grisham or Sara Paretsky. We had reentered the world of deep characters and emotional journeys. Oprah would have been proud. However, this didn't stop me from reading Angels and Demons on my own. This book was published before The DaVinci Code and is better. It was even more suspenseful and quicker paced. The movie was mediocre (why are the movie versions of these terrific books so average?) Right now, I am in the early part of The Lost Symbol, the third in Dan Brown's Robert Langdon series. I totally think of Tom Hanks as the protagonist as I turn the pages.

Often, when I reflect on what I like about certain writers or books, I point to the prose style or the development of the characters. Sometimes the stories give me new insights on life. I am often enriched by the great books that I read. However, what I enjoy about these Dan Brown novels is that I am always thoroughly entertained, even if I am not edified. But that is ok. I can always read Umberto Ecco (Dan Brown's literary counterpart) for that.

Every Painting Tells a Story Don't It

...well perhaps every painting does not tell a story, but many do. I recently visited the Art Institute of Chicago. A long time ago I figured out that the best way to experience the "Toot" is to try to see a little bit during each visit. The collections are so expansive and varied that trying to take it all in at once is impossible and leads to burnout. My best experiences at the Toot have been when I have popped in for a couple of hours and have focused on no more that two or three areas. Every time I go, I discover something new or see something again with a fresh perspective.

On my most recent visit I discovered the artist Archibald Motley. He was part of the Harlem Renaissance and was known for his paintings of African American nightlife. In fact, the painting that caught my attention is titled "Nightlife". The museum caption for this painting lauds Motley's use of color and artificial light. The caption compares Motley's use of light in Nightlife to another painting located in the next room, Edward Hopper's iconic "Nighthawks". What drew me into both of these paintings were the scenes themselves. Both of these paintings are inhabited with strong characters and suggested stories. Look at the scene at the bar in Nightlife. There are two women sitting at the bar dressed to kill and having a smoke. One of the women is looking intenesly at a man standing a few feet away, who, in turn, is looking away from the woman and has his arm outstretched towards another woman who is dancing with another man. The woman at the bar is looking at the man with what may be described as exacerbation or intense annoyance. Maybe he is her man who is trying to make time with another woman. Maybe she is obsessed with the man who doesn't even know how she feels. Towards the middle of the painting there is another man sitting alone at a table, smoking and having a drink with his eyes closed. He is surrounded by people dancing and in happy revelry. He looks like the saddest and loneliest person in the word. He may have lost someone close and dear to him through some foolish action of his.

Nighthawks presents 4 people at a diner late at night. A man and a woman sit together; another man sits away from them with his back to the viewer; the diner employee looks like he is preparing something or putting something away. It is unclear if the characters are acquainted with each other, but there is definitely a tension in the scene. The couple may be on the verge of a split or maybe they are just bored with each other. Does the mysterious third diner patron bear them any ill will? Is the employee part of their lives in some way?

Unlike reading a text narrative, these type of paintings allow the viewer to construct his own story within the context of the scene presented by the artist.

Magazines and Wilson

Amy and I receive a slew of magazines. Some are weekly, biweekly, monthly and quarterly. This is in addition to a daily newspaper. Aside from contributing to global deforestation (I still like the physical copy versus the on-line versions), the magazines present a lot of text for me to read in addition to the books that I read. I enjoy reading magazines (mostly of the non-fiction variety) in a different way that I enjoy reading books. Magazines, with their glossy photos and snappy text layouts, are often inviting to read, but do not compel me to keep around for any long period of time. In fact, my rule of thumb is that I only keep a particular magazine around until the next issue arrives. I them pass it along to a friend or recycle. If I didn't get around to reading the magazine, too bad. I get rid of it and move on to the next issue. This helps me manage the pile-up of unread material. There are enough books that I want to get to before I turn to dust. The last thing I need is having to make time to read the Time Magazine cover story about Afghanistan from March that I never got to. If I really want to read it, I have a whole week to find the time.

A friend of mine takes a different approach. She keeps the zines around so that she has more choices when she has the time to read. I guess I am hard-wired differently. I can be a lazy reader. If I did not impose the deadlines on myself, the zines would pile up. What my friend views as having more choices by keeping old zines around, I would view with a creeping anxiety as the piles of unread material gets larger.

On a different note, I just read Daniel Clowes latest graphic novel, Wilson. My friend Jimmy loaned it to me. This is the first book that Clowes has written which did not originally appear in one of his comic books. In other words, the material was first published graphic book format. Clowes is at the top of his game. He has really matured from his early punkier days. Wilson is a middle aged man living in Oakland who has no real connections with other human beings. He tries very hard to force square pegs into round holes and the results are hilarious and depressing. Kudos to Clowes for hitting one out of the ballpark. My only regret is that I read the whole thing in about an hour. Thanks Jimmy!

War Without End

Sorry for the hiatus. I just finished a book entitled The Body and The Blood. It is a great book with a terrible title. It is a non-fiction book written by Charles Sennott, a Boston Globe reporter who lived in Jesusalem for 4 years during the late 1990s/early 2000s. In his book, he documents the fragile state of the Arab Christian communities in Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Egypt at the turn of the third millennium. He uses the conceit of travelling to the places where Jesus was said to have lived or visited during his life (and resurrection). This book was given to me by a friend at my church and I highly recommend it to anyone that would like to get a sense of how the three Abrahamic religions coexist in this fractious region. I was totally riveted reading the stories of Palestinian life under occupation and the tensions between the Arabs of Christian and Islamic faiths.

The Arab/Israel conflict is not what I would call light reading. There is probably a library full of books on the history and politics of the region. Much of it is written from the Israeli perspective. Even the works that are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause are often written by Israelis or by Americans. Very few mainstream books available in the west are written by Arabs, but there are some. In order to get a deep and nuanced understanding of the conflict one must read multiple books with different perspectives. Here are some of the better books that I have read:

Out of Place by Edward Said - This is a memoir of growing up in the Middle East by the now deceased Columbia University professor. Said is the most eloquent of Arab writers.

From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman - This is probably the best overall book I have read regarding the region. Friedman was the New York Times correspondent in Lebanon in the early 1980s during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. He then became the Jerusalem correspondent just in time for the Intafada in the late 1980s.

Jerusalem in the 20th Century by Martin Gilbert - This is a decidedly pro-Israel book. Gilbert's account of the civil strife in Jerusalem leading up to the 1948 is gripping.

Six Days of War by Michael Oren - This book provides great detail regarding the 1967 war where Israel routed three large Arab armies. Israeli and Western writers have never been able to access the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian archives to present their side of the political and military story in any real depth. Until then, we can only wonder.

Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter - President Carter was unfairly labeled an anti-Semite for writing this book. He is extremely critical of Israel's policies towards the Palestinians. This book also contains his recollections of the Camp David meetings when he helped negotiate the peace between Egypt and Israel.

What Went Wrong by Bernard Lewis - This short book discusses why the Islamic world, once a beacon of progress, was eclipsed by the West in the last three centuries.

There are so many more books. I hope you all read one of these selections. We can then meet at a local hookah bar and discuss.

Peanuts

When I wrote about graphic novels earlier this month, I should have also mentioned comic strips. Although strips initially appear in newspapers, they are often compiled and released in book form. In my late teens and early 20s, I remember The Far Side and Bloom County being popular. I have to admit that I don't pay much attention to contemporary comic strips, and neither do my children. This is too bad as I imagine there must be some well drawn and imaginative strips being produced these days.

The other day I read that licensing rights for the Peanuts gang was sold to a company that manufactures Joe Boxers (among other things) for $175 million. This reminded me how much I used to love Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Sally, Shroeder, Pig Pen and Snoopy. When I was in early elementary school, my mother bought me a number of Peanuts-related books. I still own them. I pulled then off the shelf and read through some of them for the first time in decades. They still make me chuckle. The strips aren't as lacerating as Doonsbury or as clever as The Far Side, but Charles Shultz perfectly captured the innocense of childhood. These characters relate to each other without any of the worries of the adult world. In fact, there are no adults featured at all. Yet, their observations display a wisdom that is both believable and unexpected.

A friend of mine recently told me that the early Peanuts strips were drawn differently that the later ones. He mentioned that Linus was drawn as a toddler. I went to my bookshelf and found that the earliest of my books, The Wonderful World of Peanuts, was published in 1952. Sure enough, the characters look younger and, yes, Linus is a toddler. One of the central characters is those days was Shermy. Does anyone remember Shermy? I do because I played him in 4th grade in a school play. These strips are a joy to read and they totally hold up.

Roberto Bolano - Chilean Fiction Writer

I first heard about Roberto Bolano a year or two ago when his novel 2666 was first published in English. The book received tremendous critical acclaim. However, any thoughts I had of reading this novel were scuttled when I realized that the book is about 1,000 pages in length. I don't mind long stories, but 1,000 pages!!! Bolano, who died at the age of 50 in 2003, was a poet, who turned to writing fiction in his 40s. 2666, which was originally published in Spanish in 2004, was heralded by some as the first great novel of the 21st century. I figured this was one of those novels that people were buying as a result of the buzz, but not actually reading.

Recently, a couple of Bolano's short stories appeared in The New Yorker. (I keep mentioning this magazine, but it is a great source of short fiction). I don't remember the name of the first story I read, but it was a taut crime/mystery story. The more recent story is called the Prefiguration of Lalo Cura. It is about a man who grew up with his mother and aunt while these ladies were involved in the Columbian porn industry. They worked exclusively with this German director who strove to make "art porn". The story was strange, but I can't get it out of my head (and not because of the subject matter). There is something hypnotic in his writing that I can't quite put my finger on. Below is the link to the story. I hope you check it out. I may have to bite the bullet and commit to his 1,000 page magnum opus after all.

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2010/04/19/100419fi_fiction_bolano

Dying is Easy, Comedy is Hard

There is nothing better than a truly funny book. I am not talking about the snarky, ultra-hip observations of Chelsea Handler or the suburban travails of Erma Bombeck. What I love is when a writer brings the funny in the context of a novel (with plot, character development, dialogue, etc). I love the Wooster and Jeeves stories by P.G. Wodehouse. Wooster is a young man of upper class Brittan living in the 1920s. Jeeves is his valet (manservant). Wooster doesn't work and spends his days and nights socializing with other idlers of the British ruling class. He gets into all kinds of tight situations and relies on Jeeves to rescue him. The series is a scathing indictment of the British class structure and is very, very funny.

I think my favorite comedic novel is A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. The sad truth about this book is that the author committed suicide. His mother found the novel manuscript after his death and hounded the writer Walker Percy to read the manuscript. Percy was blown away with the story and through his efforts the book was published in 1980. The story takes place in New Orleans and revolves around the central character, Ignatius J. Reilly, an overfed 30-year-old still living with his mother in the city's Uptown neighborhood. This is one of those timelessly funny novels that will make you howl with laughter. It is pee in your pants funny. Before you die, read this book.

Fire in Cairo

I just finished The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany. My book club will be discussing it this Saturday night. Back in January, The New Yorker ran a piece on the contemporary Arabic novel and this book was mentioned. The description of the novel appealed to me because I wanted to read a book that shed light on Arab culture and lifestyle but that did not focus on the Israel/Palestine conflict. The novel is good (but not great), and reads like a latin "telenovela." The story centers around a cast of characters that live and work in an apartment building in Cairo in the early 1990s. Every conceivable strata of Egyptian society is represented in this novel, from the impoverished and uneducated rabble that live on the building's roof to the wealthy westernized residents of the larger apartments. The book provides a vivid portrait of various elements of Egyptian society: the political corruption, the brutality by police, the tension between the secular authority and the Islamists, the treatment of women, homosexuality in an Arab country. I come away from this book with a real appreciation of the complexities of that society. It should spark a good discussion.

Science Fiction Versus Fantasy

Many of my friends are readers of science fiction ("SF") stories. I have been reading SF since I learned to read, and as I get extremely enthusiastic about a great SF story, I love being able to talk to people about it. SF books generally don't make the book club rounds, even though many of these books explore the themes that are the hallmark of a great discussion. Perhaps this is because of a perception that the writing isn't literary or the character development takes a backseat to plot and technological conceits. Undoubtedly, the vast majority of SF is crap. However, to paraphrase the late SF writer Theodore Sturgeon: 90% of all writing is crap. I believe that much of readers' reluctance regarding SF has to do with a misunderstanding regarding the nature of the genre. People reflexively think that SF is all about spaceships and aliens. Yes, many SF stories do include these far flung plot points. However, SF should be thought of as a broad category that includes books like Orwell's 1984, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five and even Philip Roth's The Plot Against America. Some of these books involve an imagined future or an alternative past. The writers are speculating as to how these changed/imagined circumstances affect the course of society and how they impact human behavior. The point of 1984 is not how cool it is to conjure up Big Brother, but rather, to explore what brutality people are capable of and what people are willing to do to survive. SF writers like to use the label "speculative fiction" to denote a broad category.

Personally, I really enjoy the space stories. I love getting lost in the drama of exploration and confronting the unknown. When you stand outside at night (away from the city) and you see the plethora of stars, you can't help but marvel at the vastness of the universe and wonder what's out there. I personally will never get to explore this vastness, but I can read other people's fanciful tales.

If you have not read much SF and are curious, my recommendations are as follows:

"Literary" SF - Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Classic SF - The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury; The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester; Foundation by Isaac Asimov
"Hard" SF - Ender's Game/Speaker for the Dead/Xenocide by Orson Scott Card

I have not included fantasy (or horror) in the discussion above. To be sure, speculative fiction writers would include fantasy as part of the broad spectrum of stories. Personally, I don't care for fantasy all that much. Harry Potter is well and good, as are the Lord of the Rings books, but I am not drawn to the idea of magic existing in the universe. SF stories often deal with technologies that do not exist and alien species that have not been discovered, but there is, at least, a theoretical possibility of these things coming to pass. A story about flying dragons and ancient spells doesn't capture my imagination in the same way as a story about the first expedition to Pluto. Maybe I haven't read enough in the fantasy genre or maybe I haven't found the right stories unlock my inner Muggle. I would love some recommendations.

Reading Multiple Books at Once

Approximately 17 years ago I went though a period of time where I started around 15 books, but didn't finish any of them. The odd thing is that for many of these books, I would read over half of the book and then I would abandon it. I was enjoying each of these books and I simply put each one down with the intent to continue. I would go on to another book before too long without circling back to the prior books. I am sure there was some psychological reason for this behavior, but quite frankly, I am not inclined to explore it. Many years later, I made an attempt to finish the books into which I had made significant inroads. For the remaining unfinished books, I removed the bookmarks so that if I picked them up again, I would start from the beginning.

Since then, I have made a point of not reading more than two books at once. I have held fast to this rule. However, today I realized that I am in the middle of 4 books: 1) The Yacoubian Building by Alaa-Al-Aswany. This is a fascinating novel about modern Egyptian life that I am reading for my book club; 2) Hyperion/Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons. This is truly one of the greatest "hard" science fiction stories ever. It borrows from Chaucer in that a group of pilgrims (in space) tell each other their life stories. It includes elements of action, noir mystery, political intrigue, religious mysticism, and psychohistory. It is a mind blowing portrait of humanity's imagined future. 3) The Cuban Reader is a collection of essays, stories, poems, and histories of Cuba from Columbus through the present. I am learning a great deal about my roots (the brutality of the Spanish, the long history of slavery, the origins of the Revolution). 4) Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth by Terrence Dicks. This is a novelization of an early episode of this beloved series. To be clear, I am reading the book to one of my daughters. However, I have to admit that I bought the book about 20 years ago for my own reading. Yes, I was a fanboy in my younger days, and yes, my daughter is a beard in this situation.

I am not worried that I am heading back down the road of not being able to finish any books. That was a long time ago and in the interim, I have picked up and finished upwards of 200 books. There are a few books that I have dropped, but that was because the books sucked; and that is a good reason for not finishing.

Daniel Clowes - Graphic Novelist

There are two general types of graphic novels. First, there is the superhero variety. These are comic books that have been published in book-length format. Comic books have always gotten a bad rap for being silly, pulpy drivel. This reputation is often deserved. Most comic books are badly drawn and badly written. However, beginning in the 1980's, a number of comic book writers emerged who used the comic book/superhero/fantasy format, but addressed the larger issues of the day. Writers such as Alan Moore (Watchmen, V for Vendetta), Frank Miller (The Dark Night Returns, Sin City) and Neil Gaiman (Sandman) tackled issues such as terrorism, government repression, and the morality of the use of force. The Dark Night Returns potrays Batman as a heavy drinker that has doubts about his crime fighting abilities. These stories are a little more complex that the comics of the 1970's and prior.

The other general category is the "literary" graphic novel. These are often stories that could have been told in a conventional text format, but the writers chose to represent the stories graphically. If you are wondering whether a graphic novel can have any literary merit, you have to go no further that Maus I and II by Art Spiegelman. These books deal with WWII and the holocaust. Spiegelman confronts the horror of the camps and the guilt of the survivors as effectively as any novel I have read. I put it up there with Night by Elie Wiesel as a seminal work dealing with the holocaust. Spiegelman potrays the Jews as mice, the Germans as cats and the Americans as dogs. It may sound silly at first, but it is a very effective device. Another literary graphic novel that I recommend is Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. This one deals with the Iranian Revolution.

If these historical/biographical tales are not to your liking, let me tell you about Daniel Clowes. He is a fabulous graphic artist and writer. He is best known for his work Ghost World, and I wholeheartedly recommend this book as a starting point. His characters tend to be of the urban, arty, nerdy, cranky variety that may be familiar to many of you. He has a new book coming out later this month called Wilson. The quote I read from the publisher is as follows:

Meet Wilson, an opinionated middle-aged loner who loves his dog and quite possibly no one else. In an ongoing quest to find human connection, he badgers friend and stranger alike into a series of one-sided conversations, punctuating his own lofty discursions with a brutally honest, self-negating sense of humor.

You get the picture. Other graphic writers of note include Ivan Brunetti, Chris Ware and R. Crumb (he just published the Book of Genesis in graphic form and it is sitting on my shelf awaiting its turn).

Stories about Jesus on Holy Saturday

I wasn't sure what to call the Saturday in between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. I Googled it and learned it it called Holy Saturday. I probably should have known that. Anyway, I was thinking about the various stories I have read about the life of Jesus. Of course, many people are familiar with the 4 Gospels of the New Testament. But there are other stories. The Jefferson Bible comes to mind. Apparently, our third president had trouble with the "supernatural" elements of the Jesus story. He cut and paste (literally) the portions of the Gospels that related to the morals and teaching of Jesus. He left out the virgin birth, the miracles and the resurrection. For sure, it is a different way to look at Jesus. In this version, Jesus' message is front and center.

A number of years ago, Martin Scorsese adapted Nikos Kazantzakis' novel, The Last Temptation of Christ. I did not read this novel, but I did see the film. The story was controversial because as Jesus was dying on the cross, he has a moment where he imagines his life taking a different turn. He fantasizes that he married Mary Magdalene and they have children. Ultimately, Jesus does not succumb to these fantasies and dies on the cross for humanity. Some people felt that Jesus, being free from sin, would never have such fantasies. What, I think, the story attempts to deal with is the tension in the Christian perspective of Jesus. Christians believe that Jesus is God, but Jesus was also a man. It is a fascinating point that bears further reflection.

My favorite novel that deals with the Jesus story is Quarantine by Jim Crace. Yes, the title of that novel inspired the name of this blog. Quarantine tells the story of Jesus' 40 days in the Judean wilderness. Those of you that have read the Gospels are familiar with this story. However, Crace severely departs from the traditional texts. It is a re-imagining of the story with a very different outcome. Many Christians will undoubtedly be greatly offended by this tale. However, the reason I love this story is because Crace is able to delve into that very human yearning of faith in a fresh way. Yes, he turned a sacred story on its head, but I think that Crace's deviations from the Gospels were not simply to rile the Christian faithful. Rather, he was attempting to depict real truths of the human spirit. I think he succeeded.

The Unsung Translators

I recently learned that one of my sister's poems entitled Vocation: Abel Speaks is going to be translated into Russian. This got me thinking about all the books I have read in English that were translated from another language. Books such as One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Brothers Karamazov and Lolita. The first time I paid any attention to the role of the translator was when I read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. This was the spring 2006 pick in the One Book One Chicago program. I started reading a 1970s translation that I found in my parents' basement (no, I wasn't living there). The book was simply awful, or so I thought. I was having a really tough time getting into it and the language was stilted. Mercifully, I accidentally left the book in a hotel room on a business trip. I then went to my local Chicago Library branch and picked up a copy of the book. This version was translated by a different person. It was like I had picked up a completely different book. The storytelling was engaging and the language was crisp. The light bulb went off in my head: the translation made all the difference. I never realized just how significantly the quality of the translation could impact the final product. It seems obvious in retrospect, but if the translation is well done, one doesn't focus on it. I guess it took a really poor translation for me to appreciate it. Perhaps if the Russians don't like my sister's poem, she can point the finger at someone else.

The Greatest Books I Have Never Read

Amy and I were at the local library branch yesterday and I confessed to her that I had never read any Tolstoy. She was incredulous. The truth is there are a lot of "great books" that I haven't read. Of the great 19th century novels, I have never read Moby Dick, Great Expectations, Tale of Two Cities, War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Last of the Mohicans, Huck Finn, Little Women, anything by Jane Austen, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Of the 20th century novels, I have not read anything by Hemmingway or Steinbeck, Faulkner or D.H. Lawrence. I should be embarrassed by this, but I am not. Many people read these books in their teens or early 20s. During those years, I read mostly science fiction. I hope to read these great books eventually. I will read them for pleasure and I won't have to write a paper about them.

Check out the 100 best novels recommended by the board of the Modern Library. I have read 14 of these. (http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html)

OK, I have called myself out. What "great books" have you not read. I have read Hamlet, how about you?

What Narcissism Means to Me

I have not read much poetry. In fact, other than the poems I was forced to read in high school, I have read almost no poetry in my life. The only exceptions are poems written by my sister and brother-in-law, and a small collection of poems by Sylvia Plath. I guess I should count The Odyssey as well. It says something that our book club waited until pick #98 to discuss a collection of poems. My wife (I'll call her Amy), selected a book of poems written by Tony Hoagland called What Narcissism Means to Me. We had an excellent discussion that explored the themes of the poems (anger, anxiety, love, ego). Amy did a nice job of setting the tone for the discussion with some well thought out points. We all really enjoyed the book and agreed that what was masterful about Hoagland's style was his ability to create an impression of a story, establish characters, and create vivid moods, all while employing beautiful if spare language. Reading these poems was actually enjoyable and did not feel like work. I can feel the poets just cringing at this sentiment, but so often, reading poems can be a chore. This collection has really opened me up to exploring poetry further.

This was crystallized for me when each of the four of us (one of our members could not attend) took turns reading our favorite poems. As I listened to my friends read the poems aloud, I appreciated the humor, anger and pathos of the poems more intensely than when I read them. Poems are meant to be heard.

Junot Diaz - A Great American Writer

One of my favorite writers is Junot Diaz. I just read a short story he wrote in the current issue of The New Yorker (March 22 issue). Junot was born in the Dominican Republic and emigrated to the US when he was 5 or 6. He is best known for the novel "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" for which he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2008. His stories explore the tension between the old country and new; what it means to be an urban American in the modern day. His language is raw and peppered with Spanish. He perfectly captures the cadence and rhythm of the urban/Latino experience. The story appearing in The New Yorker is called "The Pura Principle." I highly recommend it as a starting point. If you like his storytelling, please read Oscar Wao.

98 Books (More or Less)

I reviewed the list of all the books that my book club has discussed over the past 14 years. Including the book to be discussed this weekend, we are up to #98. Technically, we have read over 100 books because two of the discussions involved multiple books. Anyway, below is the list. It is a mixed bag of fiction, non-fiction, contemporary, classic, popular writers, obscure titles, etc. We tend to read books that have been around for at least a little while. I don't think we have any of the Oprah books on our list (not that there is anything wrong with that...)

Title - Author

A Lesson Before Dying - Ernest Gaines
The Beauty Myth - Naomi Wolf
Strange Pilgrims - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Dinosaur Man - Susan Baur
Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner
American Tabloid - James Elroy
Long Day's Journey into Night - Eugene O'Neill
Blood Sport - James B. Stewart
Shards of Memory - Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
The Storyteller -Mario Vargas Llosa
Vineland - Thomas Pynchon
Naked - David Sedaris
A Scientific Romance - Ronald Wright
Winter Wheat - Mildred Walker
Hearts in Atlantis - Stephen King
Independent People - Haldor Laxness
The Fall - Albert Camus
Night Train - Martin Amis
The Seventh Son - Orson Scott Card
Foreigh Affairs - Allison Lurie
Alias Grace - Margaret Atwood
A Man in Full - Tom Wolfe
The Adventures of Auggie March - Saul Bellow
Another Supposely Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again - David Foster Wallace
The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett
The Fixer - Bernard Malamud
Bullet Park - John Cheever
World's End - T.C. Boyle
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
The Red and the Green - Iris Murdoch
To the White Sea - James Dickey
American Pharaoh - Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor
Kavalier and Clay - Michael Chabon
Disgrace - James Coetzee
The Intuitionist - Colson Whitehead
Emotional Coaching - Author's name and exact title lost in time
Being Dead - Jim Crace
Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
Dancing After Hours - Andre Dubus
For the Love of a Good Woman - Alice Munro
In the Heart of the Sea - Nathaniel Philbrick
The Debt to Pleasure - John Lanchester

THE GENESIS CYCLE
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce
The Counterlife - Philip Roth
Supertoys (stories)/Pinocchio - Brian Aldiss/Carlo Collodi
Genesis - God
Gilgamesh - Anonymous

Arabian Sands - Wilfred Thesiger
The Odyssey - Homer
Family Matters - Rohinton Mistry
The Life of Pi - Jan Martell
Atonement - Ian McEwan
The Diagnosis - Alan Lightman

THE VIETNAN WAR MINI-CYCLE
The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien
The Best and the Brightest - David Halberstam
Reflections of a Warrior - Miller/Kureth

THE BOOKS AND FILMS CYCLE
The Third Man - Graham Greene
The Long Goodbye - Raymond Chandler
The Orchid Thief - Susan Orleans
Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
The House of Sand and Fog - Andre Dubus III
Orpheus -Anonymous

A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
Herzog - Saul Bellow
The Little Friend - Donna Tartt
The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury
White Noise - Don Delillo
Memories of My Melancholy Whores - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Unconditional Parenting - Alfie Cohn
Saturday - Ian McEwan
The March - E.L. Doctorow
The Moor's Last Sigh - Salman Rushdie
Chronicles: Part 1 - Bob Dylan
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Twilight of the Superheroes - Deborah Eisenberg
Brick Lane - Monica Ali
The Master - Colm Toibin
The Dark Night Returns/Ice Haven/Maus - Miller/Clowes/Spiegelman
What is the What - Dave Eggers
Yiddish Policeman's Detective Union - Michael Chabon
Later, At the Bar - Rebecca Barry
Absurdistan - Gary Shteyngart
No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy
Out Stealling Horses - Per Petterson

THE RELIGION CYCLE
Settings of Siver - Stephen Wylen
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Quarantine - Jim Crace
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Jefferson Bible - Thomas Jefferson

The Great Depression and the New Deal - Eric Rachway
The Beet Queen - Louise Erdich
Dangerous Laughter - Steven Millhauser
Einstein Walter - Isaacson
So Long, See You Tomorrow - William Maxwell
Sputnik Sweetheart - Haruki Murakami
Netherland - Joseph O'Neill
What Narcissism Means to Me - Tony Hoagland

And So it Goes

I have been a big reader all my life. I enjoy reading books, discussing books, recommending books, and knowing what others are reading. This blog is an attempt to extend and continue this thread. In 1996, I founded a book club with my wife and two other couples. We rotate the book picks, and the person who picks the book hosts a dinner party. We get together roughly every 5 or 6 weeks. We have read and discussed around 100 books. The best of which (we all agree) was Wallace Stegner's "Angle of Repose." The book I hated the most was "Herzog" by Saul Bellow. This project has been one of the most enriching experiences of my life. It is the cornerstone of my social life, and the members of the book club are my closest friends in the world.

One interesting sidebar: As this book club is a mixed gender book club, I did not immediately realize that most book clubs are women only. It was only many years later when I founded a book club at work that I realized this gender bent. My male colleagues were just as prolific in their reading as the women. For whatever reason, my male colleagues were not interested in discussing what they have read to the same degree as my female colleagues.

From time to time, I will post my thoughts regarding books and stories I have read. I am currently reading a book of poems by Tony Hoagland called "What Narcissism Means to Me." I am a third of the way through the book and I find the poems to be extremely accessible. I do not read much poetry, preferring the linear and logical progression of most narrative prose. Poetry always seemed more about style and sound over meaning. I am sure my sister, a published poet, would have a few things to say about this. It will be interesting to see how my preconceptions are impacted by these poems. The colllection will be discussed by my book club on Saturday. My wife picked this collection and has prepared a number of discussion points. I will let you know how it goes...