Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. On reflection this has to be one of the more misogynist books I've read. Not a female in it that isn't a castrating fiend, hellish domineering (castrating) mother, or a whore. The whores of course are the good guys. Never read a book before where the redemptive act by the hero was sexual assault of the villain. Putting that criticism aside, it was a good story with vivid characters. Bromden's voice was compelling, and I liked the image of the combine as the oppressive homogenizing forces in society working together. Haven't seen the movie, but by percolation I had an idea what to expect, so perhaps the suspense was a little spoiled. Anyway, I actually thought the ending would be sadder than it was.

Neil Gaiman, Stardust

Neil Gaiman, Stardust. I've been reading this aloud to Matthew (with minor editing) but I peeked ahead. This was a darling story, the village of Wall and Faerie and the lands beyond were wonderful and the journey through was delightful. I especially enjoyed the asides and minor stories in Faerie (where all the lands that have been eliminated from maps have gone). The story had such a traditional feel that at times one could imagine it was a George MacDonald story while the next moment it read like a comic book. I loved the movie, and for once I didn't think that the book far outshone the adaptation, but it was still worth the read. There is definitely room for more stories from Wall.

Philip Roth, Portnoy's Complaint

Philip Roth, Portnoy's Complaint. The plaintive voice of Alexander Portnoy is familiar and droning and his complaint is an endless (although entertaining) circle. It's funny, very funny. It's also filthy almost unbearably, filthy to the point of wallowing. In fact, it's probably one of the most offensive books ever written (if taken seriously). Makes me glad Freud and psychoanalysis are pretty well out of fashion. I think I like later Roth better - frailty and decay of the body is a more interesting obsession than masturbation.

Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking. This book was terrifying to me. I don't want to think about how precarious life is and how fundamentally powerless I am to control it. And yet I've been circling around this knowledge daily, learning how fragile and intricate is our construction, and how contingent.

But, back to the story. Joan Didion is a graceful writer, and her precision and clarity make her emotion more powerful. It's not really a memoir of grief, but a story of the loves of her life, her husband and child, of companionship and friendship and living together, brought into relief by sudden absence. She conveys her grief and love in stark and thoughtful narrative.

Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth. Blah. Nothing worse than returning to something you loved as an eight-year-old and being disappointed. (Is it ironic that it seemed BORING and POINTLESS?) It reminded me of an eviscerated and very dull The Pilgrim's Progress.

Isabel Allende, Portrait in Sepia

Isabel Allende, Portrait in Sepia. This is the first Allende I've read, and it was pretty forgettable. All the individual parts of this story were fine, but the whole thing was lacking. It was a little trashy, a little superficial, but the real thing wrong was that it didn't seem true. I enjoyed the early unraveling of the family history, but the latter half of the story was just hollow. The protagonist, Aurora de Valle, was a delightful child and you could see through her eyes as she moved between cultures and households and you loved who she loved. But she was unconvincing as an adult, as a lover and as an artist (as a photographer she seemed especially forced) and so she was an seriously unconvincing narrator. I lost interest in the characters by the end.

Art Spiegelman, Maus(II)

Art Spiegelman, Maus(II). Once again thanks to Bredon I get reading material. These are really impossible to describe. I can only say that they were moving and beautiful and funny and that you should read them.

Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass

Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. These were wonderful. Rich and fascinating, full of adventure and anguish, at once thoughtful and exciting. Bredon lent them to me and I disappeared for the next few days. I loved the universe and I loved Lyra and Will. I was not even a bit disappointed (in fact they were at least as good as The Golden Compass) and I still think that I haven't read such great stories as these in years. It's odd, since the theological perspective is opposite, how much these reminded me of Lewis's Space Trilogy (these were more fun and more engrossing, though). Actually, they weren't theologically as far apart as you'd think, since Lewis's Satan and Pullman's Authority are remarkably similar (you could certainly describe both as bent). They also motivated me to go back and attack Milton again. I had just been attempting to reread him, but I'll read happily along for five or six pages and then realize I have no idea what is going on. Maybe I can try again now with more success.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind

Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind. A bookish gothic adventure (more like Dumas than anything else). The title tells you what you need to know - great fun and melodrama with overblown prose. A boy is in search of a mysterious author whose books are being systematically destroyed in post-war Barcelona. Along the way are many burned letters, secrets, romances, tragedies, and Sugus candies. Even though the final plot twist was predictable, this was a wonderfully suspenseful and intricate story. Also, I would love to visit the Cemetery of Forgotten Books.

Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin

Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin, translated by Charles Johnston. I enjoyed this translation much more than the one I first read. It veers between gossip, romance, tragedy, country soliloquy and high comedy, and it's in verse (which seems only proper). I loved Tatyana's opinion of the city socialite scene:

"This world's so vacuous that it's got
no spark of fun in all its rot!"

Pushkins' Tatyana is one of the few heroines that gets to grow up from the period. I was greatly cheered that she had the courage to shoot Evgeny down.
(Oh man, I really really would love to learn Russian, at least enough to start, but with my language skills it might take me decades, plus it would most likely be hard work.)

Art Spiegelman, Maus(I)

Art Spiegelman, Maus(I). Thank you Bredon, via Mom. I thought I had already read this because I have heard so much about it. I'm only angry that you didn't lend mom both volumes, although it gives me an excuse to go to the library. More after II.

Allen Ginsberg, HOWL and Other Poems

Allen Ginsberg, HOWL and Other Poems. ("I saw the best minds of my generation...starving hysterical naked,") well, you remember these, I'm sure, or at least a parody of them. The poems are oddly, faintly, occasionally vividly beautiful. Always thumping and often filthy. A little monotonous. Could be useful as voice over for an anti-drug campaign for one of those stark and ineffective television ads with pictures of squalor and madness. I prefer my squalor in prose, but hey.

Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policeman's Union

Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policeman's Union. So, Israel imploded in 1948 and a Jewish settlement was founded (a hopeful folly called Sitka) in Alaska and luckily for the fun of the language, it's a Yiddish speaking territory. Meyer Landsman is a (hard-boiled, soft-boiled?) alcoholic police detective in a unit that's about to be dissolved when the sovereignty of Sitka reverts to the State of Alaska. Ok, so maybe I can't explain the plot, but it's wonderful. Read this. So fun, so nice to listen to in your head, you'll laugh.

Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye

Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye. The story of the remembered girlhood of a painter. A book that reminded me how intense being nine was and how cruel and complicated children can be. Atwood always tells a good story.

Zadie Smith, On Beauty

Zadie Smith, On Beauty. Incredible. Funny, entertaining, appalling. The Belseys are a liberal, academic, contorted, and confused family who are insanely fun to read about. Class, love, politics, selfishness, everything Smith put in this book is alive and sharp and deadly. And this story is much more fun to read than Howard's End.

John Updike, Marry Me

John Updike, Marry Me. The older I get the more I love John Updike's language, and the more I recoil from his characters. I don't know why I keep coming back to him, but I do. There is something there that draws me, even in the most woeful of his books. But really, his suburban adultery stories I find the most hopeless and dismal to read of almost anything. I'd like to check out one of his really good novels or better short stories to cleanse my mind. This particular book was the story of two couples and the excruciating mess they make of their lives. Although Jerry, Sally, Richard, and Ruth are scummy and irritating, there is just such sorrow and lostness in their descriptions (not in themselves, really, but in aspects of themselves), well, I can't explain it but I find it somehow compelling. He's writing about miserable, cowardly people, but not to redeem, exalt, or make examples of them. They are just people. Not very nice people. But recognizable.

Richard Brautigan, A Confederate General From Big Sur, Dreaming of Babylon, The Hawkline Monster

Richard Brautigan, A Confederate General From Big Sur, Dreaming of Babylon, The Hawkline Monster. Brautigan is truly funny and bizarre in splashes, but somehow there wasn't much going on in these books. I enjoy the absurd, but it helps to have some sort of structure. Really, they just weren't that great. (What sort of masochist reads three novels by Brautigan in a row? Well, it is summer vacation and they were bound together so I just sort of plowed right through with no regard for my sanity). Years ago I enjoyed Trout Fishing In America, although it wasn't the work of transcendent genius that I'd been promised. If I'd read these separately, buffered by several decades, I might feel more charitably toward Brautigan, but as it is I feel as if I drank a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster and used my head as a battering ram.

Mitch Albom, tuesdays with Morrie

Mitch Albom, tuesdays with Morrie. A dear friend gave me this book as a gift. To be honest, I thought I wouldn't like it ("I don't usually go for the uplifting") but I did enjoy reading it. Maybe I didn't connect with the author's tone or his answers, but I did connect to the questions he was asking. These questions matter. How do you live a good life? How do you value other people and love them? What is important and what is distraction? What are the values of our culture and are they right? How do you live a good life within a culture that is dysfunctional? How do you tolerate fear, pain, and loss? How do you confront your own death, and worse, the death of those you love? I enjoy people who ask these questions and honestly try to answer them. It's not a matter of religion or no religion to me - I can deeply empathize with most people if they are thoughtful. The intolerable sin is apathy, a careless approach to life. Don't be unthoughtful or formulaic - have a reason for what you do and who you are. Not asking questions is worse than having the wrong answers or no answers. Morrie's insights reminded me of the Forster epigraph "only connect". So the answers in this book were simple - love each other, listen, touch, learn. Pretty basic humanism, hard to argue with (water's mighty wet stuff, chief!). I didn't love the author - he didn't delve deeply enough, it seemed to me, but I loved the subject of the book. A great teacher is important and should be cherished - don't let your teachers fade from your mind.

Malory, The Morte Darthur

Malory, The Morte Darthur. Oh the battles! And the courtliness and cruelty! And the High Language.... If I only had occasion to say something like: "Madam, I pray you that ye be not displeased with me for I will take the adventure that God will send me" or "Arise, for shame, and perform this battle with me to the utterance!"

Victor Villaseñor, Rain of Gold

Victor Villaseñor, Rain of Gold. I guess this came before the book Thirteen Senses, which I read a few years ago but didn't realize was a sequel. A funny, juicy, and joyful family history. The grandmothers are priceless characters, even though occasionally over the top (although for a lady that shares raunchy anecdotes with her personal friend the virgin Mary every morning, over-the-top is understatement). It successfully pulls off interweaving separate narratives that eventually join without being irritating or distracting.