Winter Reading List

Every Christmas, several members of my family look on my amazon.com wishlist and pick several books to give me as a gift. This keeps me knee deep in books well into the summer so I take it pretty seriously.

I have already included Klosterman's new book, the most recent Hornby, and a collection of Nick Tosches writing - still I am pretty sure I am missing some good stuff. Please let me know if anything comes to mind...

obrigado

The Hose Book Club: Summer Reading Edition

I am reading several books simultaneously. Let me tell you about them.


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I just finished reading A Prayer for the City by Buzz Bissinger. Buzz, who is a humorless mega d*uchebag, is a gifted writer who is wholly committed to his craft. The man who moved his entire young family to East Nowhere Texas just so he could write Friday Night Lights had a unique opportunity to follow Ed Rendell during his first term as the Mayor of Philadelphia in the mid 90s. Sure Rendell, is a compelling figure but what makes this book work is Bissinger's approach. His focus is on the plight of modern urban America, with Philly as its best example. Well written, exciting and insightful I really can't recommend this book enough.


First, an admission - I am a huge Jay McInerney fan. I have read most of it. I thought The Good Life was awesome and I might be sort of alone there. So far this book is great. It's a collection of short stories from the last 25 years of Jay's writing life. Long time fans will note the short stories that were the inspiration for later novels like Bright Lights, Big City and even Model Behavior. All the stories find a familiar pattern. We have a hero, and he is terribly broken. He drinks/smokes/whores entirely too much, forever losing the battle between his true self and his inner urbanite. The urbanite always wins and every protagonist's better angel always loses. Good stuff. Sometimes lighter than pop corn but that's not a reason to not like it.

I have not read this yet, but I loved Carter Beats the Devil. The jumping off point for the novel is a day in 1916 when Charlie Chaplin is seen simultaneously in 800 places. What follows is probably a very detailed novel that intertwines the lives of several individuals (both real and fictional) to tell a story that will probably make everyone a littl sad for a world that no longer exists. I can't wait.

The Hose Book Club: The Wordy Shipmates

People usually don’t try to discuss history books in book clubs. It is very hard; what are you going to do? Fact check? Comment heavily on prose? Yawn! Who wants to do that in a book club, virtual or otherwise? The reason we are discussing Sarah Vowell’s The Wordy Shipmates is because I read this review for it in the NY Times. This Virginia Heffernan person is clearly humorless but I wondered if there was some truth in her argument. Are we who enjoy this stuff somehow part of this massive poseur conspiracy of entitled liberals sipping free trade coffee and finding new and inventive ways to ironically study the founding fathers just to sound more interesting at cocktail parties? I wonder if we and more generally the people who listen to “This American Life” are just plain trying too hard. Thoreau said that “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”. Maybe he got it wrong. Maybe, we are not that quiet at all. Maybe everyone around us is to busy desperately listening to NPR podcasts on their iPods to notice anyone else. It could be our very own little Matrix...

I say no, I say that’s nonsense. This book is preposterously enjoyable. Other historians, such as Doris Kearns Goodwin, have it easy. Abraham Lincoln and his cabinet of the manically insecure (Salmon P. Chase) and elitist, east coast dandies (xTian…I mean William H. Seward) are totally fascinating and have an insurrection as a backdrop just to keep things moving along. Even Evil could make that interesting. Ms. Vowell spent the entirety of Assassination Vacation wandering around the US pointing why a relative of John Wilkes Booth has a statue in Gramercy Park and staring at street corners in D.C. where assassination plots were hatching hoping to catch inspiration. Somehow it works. Her premise is that the notion of American Exceptionalism firmly ties the United States to its Puritan roots. Focusing on how the Puritans that came to America took the idea of John Winthrop’s “City on a Hill” to heart and pursued a vigorous intellectual debate on the topic of this shared responsibility to a completely preposterous end, in the case of Roger Williams anyway, Vowell tells a compelling story that made thoroughly entertaining and enhanced by her use of punchy, colorful language. Does it go too far? Sure, Anne Hutchinson is not a “Puritan Oprah” but it is funny to imagine her as such and if you can stop giggling enough to read around it you might actually learn something. This is the AP History Class I always wished I sat in if Aaron Sorkin went and re-imagined it for TV.

So I enjoyed The Wordy Shipmates and I think Virgina Heffernan is a killjoy. There may of course be a deep rooted reason for this. Simultaneously to reading this book, I also picked up Shakespeare Wrote for Money - a collection of essays by Nick Hornby on his reading fetish originally published in the Believer Magazine. It just so happened that Vowell wrote the introduction. Towards the end of the introduction, Ms. Vowell chastising herself for not being more like Hornby; devouring all books in sight and how instead she spent a lot of time watching episodes of Battlestar Galactica. I have the exact same problem. If she is a faux-indie girl full of pretense then maybe I am as well. I’ve been called worse things

Full Disclosure - I hate NY’s NPR station, but I am also that dude. I has listened to NPR stations across the country and actually have an opinion one way or the other. WNYC is legitimately lame so I never listen to this American Life on the radio. I do listen to the podcasts at night, to help me sleep. It’s an important part of my life, but my reasons why very closely resemble damning something with faint praise so I usually avoid talking about it.

The Hose Book Club

Our recent thread on genders and book clubs was fairly well received. Catjjy and Andrea have both moved for a Book Club.

I just can't fathom sitting around sipping tea and talking about a book. So here is what I propose.

Every couple of months, I pick a book and post it as what I am reading. As part of the "we love to read" series, I will finish the book and write a review for it. Since you have the opportunity to read along with me, you will be able to post your own reviews in the comments section, driving what I hope will be pithy conversation.

To kick this off, I am going to read The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell. Vowell will probably be known to you from her work in the film, The Incredibles or her commentary on This American Life on NPR. A few years ago, Sparks suggested I read her book Assassination Vacation. AV was a hysterical book, that followed Vowell as she toured sites that related to and studied the history of the three presidential assassinations in US history.

This book takes a similar tone to explore the nature of the puritans who founded this country. I expect to enjoy this book very much and and hope you will too.

Anyway, let's give it a shot and see how it goes.


Update:
I have no idea how long it will take you to read this book. I can tell you now it will take me 3 days from the moment I pick it up. I'm pretty sure that's not enough time. So I will read it and write my review but not post it till January 15th, 2009. That should give folks ample time to read it.

The link on the side takes you to Amazon.com where the book is for sale for $17 plus some change and tax. amazon.com is a pretty handy site for folks who like to read.

Got Books?

Like many women, the first part of the Sunday NY Times I read is the Sunday Style Section. The above fold article today was about women in book clubs and how they have managed to turn something relatively innocent into a passive/aggressive power play. I found the article pretty boring but the assumption was interesting. Here's why.

This week, I have heard four women mention their book club. I barely registered the first two, because ummm...who cares. However, when Pits brought up her 3 failed book clubs and the hopes she had for the current one I was like "wow, women love their book clubs". Even ET #2, who I thought hated her coworkers, mentioned her workplace initiated book club last night at dinner. ET #2 - don't jump ugly with me, I was not alone in my surprise. Evil was so taken aback he felt the need to confirm "you mean your current coworkers?"

On the other hand, this week a few friends wrote the following comments about "The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao" on Facebook.

TMO said: i'm reading this book now and i've realized that Diaz writes like a dominican xTian, right down to the [redacted] roots. do you have a pen name i should know about?

Manolo wrote: I finished this book about a week ago myself...I also thought of xTian quite often as I read it...lots of wide-ranging cultural references...you only get that kind of stuff from The Simpsons and xTian...I can't wait until xTian puts his collection out...I have read some good stuff of his over the years!!!

This got me thinking. I read a ton and I am not alone. These examples aside, I know for a fact that Sparks, Le 3. Evil, KillerB and many more read extensively and that we share taste in books. However, we don't organize and discuss. When we do engage on a book, we make it as awkward as possible. In one recent example, Sparks and I had fairly detailed(15+ exchanges) SMS only discussion of "The Brief Wondrous Life...". Can you imagine a harder way to have this conversation? There's gotta be a better way...

What does this say about the difference in sexes and the nature of friendship? I have no idea! I just felt like showing off; TMO and Manolo apparently love my writing style. Who knew...

Things that Matter Only to Me

I just read "The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons" on my iPhone. This is interesting for several reasons

• I read this story on my iPhone. Pretty neat all in all. To do it, I downloaded my new favorite iPhone app, Stanza. There are several places you can pull down books that are in the public domain.
  
• All of F. Scott Fitzgerald's works are in the public domain. I had not idea that was the case and I think that's great. None of Hemingway's stuff is in the public domain. I find that a bit tragic.
  
• All of Joseph Conrad's books are also public domain. I find that a bit tragic
  
• Apparently, someone decided to make a movie about "The Curious Case..."