Close Range: Wyoming Stories

by Annie Proulx

When the movie Brokeback Mountain came out back in 2005, I remember hearing from somewhere that the original short story is quite different from the movie. Ever since, I'd been curious about it.

(For the record, I didn't like the movie that much the first time I saw it. I was just kinda "meh." I watched it again on DVD, cuz I have several friends who really-really-really liked it. After watching it a second time, I realize that part of the reason I didn't like it is that it's hard to understand what the characters are saying. Ennis especially is a mumbler, but Jack too. And I think the sound quality in general is just kinda poor. I did, however, like the movie more upon second watching — at home with the sound turned way up — and in fact it made me cry.)

So, fast-forward to late last week. I finally got around to reading the book. "Brokeback Mountain" happens to be the last story in the collection, and I wanted to read some of the others for the sake of context too. I didn't really like the first one... second one was better. Not bad, necessarily, but not my cup of tea. I got through most of the book, and warmed up a little to the western milieu, but finally decided to skip the last two before "Brokeback Mountain."

Turns out it's exactly like the movie — or vice versa, I suppose. There are several lines of dialogue in the movie exactly as they are in the book. And again it made me cry.

I wish I could remember how/where I got the impression that the story was supposed to be different from the movie. Makes me wonder if there wasn't some of kind of conservative smear campaign to convince people the movie was pro-gay Hollywood propaganda because stuff like that wouldn't/doesn't happen in the "real" wild west.

A Countess Below Stairs

by Eva Ibbotson

I don't know if I've made any snide remarks about romance novels here in this blog, but I'm pretty sure I haven't fully and openly mocked them — at least, I hope I haven't, because I have a confession to make...

When I was in middle school, I used to sneak into my sister's room so I could borrow her Sweet Valley High books. I've read almost all of the Princess Diaries books (and there's a lot of them). I've read (and enjoyed) Angus, Thongs and Full-frontal Snogging (and two of its sequels); Meagan Meade's Guide to the McGowan Boys (and wished it had a sequel); I Capture the Castle (even though, or perhaps because I'd already seen the movie); and I especially loved Victoria and the Rogue, from the Avon True Teen Romance series. Romantic comedies are well-represented in my Netflix queue. (I've also read quite a few Victorian novels — Austen, various Brontes, Hardy, Eliot — many of which involve romance, but they have history on their side and aren't as embarrassing.)

So imagine my (sort of secret, barely concealed) joy when I came upon this book, in which a young Russian countess flees the revolution and, having been forced to abandon all her wealth and possessions, finds work as a lowly chambermaid on an English estate... I shouldn't have to add that, of course, the estate's dashing young master returns from abroad and discovers a stunningly beautiful and shockingly well-educated young woman has joined his staff.... (Now that I've written staff I really must let you finish the thought yourself.)

Actually, everyone is quite chaste, moonlit skinny-dipping (and accidental skinny-watching) notwithstanding. All in all I really liked this book, for what it is. It isn't spectacular in any way, but it's a very good example of the genre, and, to it's credit, the plot owes more to the likes of Austen than to the more modern Harlequin formula.

Burndive
    and
Cagebird

by Karin Lowachee

The first book in this sort-of-series is Warchild, which I wrote about here. It's not exactly a series, because the stories aren't sequential; instead they're the same basic story told from the points of view of three different characters (another echo of Orson Scott Card's "Enderverse"). I don't know why I didn't just check the publication dates, but I somehow managed to read them out of order. It didn't really matter for these two, but reading either of these before Warchild would have ruined that book's ending, so I'm glad I at least got that part right.

These books are definitely of the military sci-fi subgenre, but there's also the heavy focus on character and emotion typical of the soft/social sci-fi subgenre. Each of the main characters experiences physical and psychological trauma, and ultimately finds the inner strength to endure, first, and then to free themselves from their pasts. The way the protagonists evolve sort of reminded me of some of Octavia Butler's heroines, too.

All three characters are young men, ranging in age from 14 to 20 during the main action of the books, with some flashbacks or introductory parts about their earlier childhoods. (At my library, they're classified as young adult books, but I've seen them catalogued as regular SF on other libraries' websites.) Partly as a function of their ages, and also because of a major plot element — war, piracy, kidnapping, forced prostitution — sexual themes arise. It's mostly innuendo of the gay-vague and gay-chicken* variety; only Cagebird has actual gay characters and actual sex happening, which is slightly more explicit than a romance novel but far from the language of erotica.

*Not to be confused with the older gay slang "chicken," referring to a very young gay boy/man usually in the context of a relationship with an older gay man, "gay chicken" is when (supposedly) straight guys say and/or do "gay" things to each other, turning up the intensity and pushing boundaries until one of them "chickens" out. It's related to frat-boy/athlete/military sexual bravado and gay-baiting, and it depends on the paradox that the more secure you are in your masculinity, the farther you can push the gay boundary. In these books, there's also an implied feeling that there's much less social stigma attached to being gay and that gender and sexuality categories are... not exactly fluid, but maybe more mix-and-match.

Final analysis: the action and intrigue of Ender's Game or a Heinliein book, with the added attraction of teen angst and sexiness. I loved this series, and I'd recommend it to teens and adults alike. I'm very sad that my library no longer has Warchild and is down to one copy each of Burndive and Cagebird. I'm even considering putting them in my Top 10.

The Altruism Equation: seven scientists search for the origins of goodness

by Lee Alan Dugatkin

I enjoy science books, and one of my particular science interests is evolution; I'm also a cynic, and I don't really believe in (philosophical or pure) altruism. Evolutionary biology has catalogued plenty of examples of behavior that appears altruistic, at least when one considers animals as individuals, but the altruism often vanishes when the behavior is framed in social or genetic terms. I pretty much take it for granted, but not everyone — scientists included — agrees with the major tenets of Richard Dawkins' argument in his book The Selfish Gene.

All that is just a long way of saying I was very interested to read this book, which explores the historical and contemporary scientific discourse on altruistic, or apparently altruistic behavior. The approach taken is to examine the lives and studies of seven researchers, with the intention, I presume, to make the scientific story more compelling by adding more of a plot (so-called literary nonfiction being all the rage the last couple of years). Unfortunately, it doesn't quite make the grade. It's quite dry and, well, science-y. OK for the academically inclined, or those actually doing school work, but not so great for the dabbler.

And since we're on the subject, I did once upon a time read some of The Selfish Gene. I was supposed to read it over the summer between high school and college, because my college had stuck me in its honors program, and they were making all the honors students read the book and attend a lecture/Q&A with Dawkins himself. Looking back, I squandered the opportunity, but back then my scientific interests hadn't matured — plus, what kind of hopeless nerd wants to read a science book the summer after graduating high school?! I remembering feeling as if I mostly understood most of what I read in the book, but I didn't really have the context to understand why the ideas were controversial or paradigm-changing. (Shortest possible version: genes want to reproduce themselves, and every other biological apparatus — from viral coats to eukaryotic cells, to simple multicellular organisms, all the way to complex organisms such as humans and bees and sequoias — has evolved in order to further that goal of reproducing genes, rather than reproducing the organism itself; in other words, people don't really have babies to make more people, they have babies because the genes inside people make more genes by making people want to have babies.) Also, as I said in my review of another Dawkins book (here), he's not the greatest writer.

Blue Pills: a positive love story

by Frederick Peeters

As much as this book is deserving of a dignified review, I won't be able to go on until I say this: "Peter" and "Peters" are funny enough, but the extra E in this author's name is just icing on the cake!

Now. Ahem. This is another straggler, one I read a long time ago and I'm just now catching up. It's probably one of, if not the first proper Graphic Novels — emphasis on the "novel" — I ever read. It's a comics memoir about the author's relationship with an HIV-positive partner. The description I initially read did not specify genders, so I suppose I must have been thinking or hoping it was about gay guys. Turns out he dated an HIV-positive woman, who had a son who also is poz.

It's a good book, but I don't remember being amazed by it or anything. It's certainly interesting — especially if you've ever been in, or have the potential to be in a sero-discordant couple — and it's not a huge time commitment either. Would definitely add something to a sex-ed lesson about HIV/AIDS, and I don't recall anything that would make it inappropriate for teens.

On Truth
     and
On Bullshit

by Harry G. Frankfurt

These two tiny books are precious gems of practical philosophy. They're basically extended ruminations on the natures of their subjects — truth and bullshit, respectively — with an eye to how an understanding of either can be useful in navigating our lives, making judgments and decisions, negotiating relationships, analyzing and evaluating knowledge about how things are in the world*.

What good is truth? Why care about it? How do useful instances of truth (known facts) differ from the abstract idea of truth? How does bullshit (obfuscation and/or meaningless jibber-jabber) differ from an outright lie? What do they have in common? How does all this affect our quest for the reliable information we need to get through day-to-day life?

The author is a professor emeritus at Princeton University. I kind of want to buy these books, partly because they're so tiny and cute, but also because they're the kind of books you can re-read at different points in life and learn new things every time.

*I say "how things are in the world" instead of lower-case "reality" to avoid confusion with Reality, which can be made subject to hair-splitting, ennervating, and/or fatuous metaphysical speculations. I'm just talking about the reliable, easily agreed upon physical world.

The Graveyard Book

by Neil Gaiman

Meh.



I'd really like to just leave it at that, but duty (hee-hee) compels me to let you know that this book just won the Newberry, pretty much the ultimate award for children's literature. Personally, I think it should be a young adult book, first of all; second, if not for Gaiman's already creepy oeuvre, I'd accuse the author of trying to cash in on the trendiness of all things occult by cramming as many stock spectres as possible into one book. It's not that it's bad, it's just... maybe the problem is that I went to see the movie Coraline in the middle of reading this book, and I was reminded how much more original Coraline is. Also, it should be noted that recent Newberry winners have been books that adults think have literary merit but that aren't necessarily popular with kids, and this, apparently, is what they've come up with in reaction to that criticism.

The Book of Dave

by Will Self

I only just noticed the subtitle: "a revelation of the recent past and the distant future" — which pretty well sums up the whole idea of the book, although it doesn't even begin to hint at the complexity of its execution. This book's layers have layers, and those layers have layers too; hierarchy and archaeology are definite themes.

The recent past is the story of Dave, a cab driver in London who's been through a rough divorce. He's got a number of "issues," as pop psychologists like to say, most importantly his estrangement from his son, and he goes pretty crazy for a while, actually spending a short time institutionalized. To explain too much about his episode would possibly give away too much about the plot, but, yes, he does make a book of sorts, as the title indicates.

The distant future is a post-apocalyptic, post-global-warming world in which rising sea levels have made the UK into an archipelago of smaller islands populated by a feudal society of religious oligarchs, land owners, and uneducated villagers. At least, that's what you'll surmise after reading a bit, since the details are left intentionally vague. The religion of these future people has echoes of Christianity (particularly the medieval, Inquisition-y brand) but is based primarily on the worship of Dave, who gave them a book that is more or less their bible.

The restriction of access to knowledge in general, and control of Dave's book in particular, is the linchpin of the social and religious hierarchy, and the Davist belief system is particularly at odds with the pastoral lifestyle and Natural (capital on purpose) intelligence of the residents of a certain very remote island — which also happens to have exclusive access to a highly prized natural resource and is therefore subject to very rigid control by the authorities. Unbeknownst to the islanders (although the reader begins to suspect it very early on), the island is also the cradle of Davism, where the book was found. Being quite remote and having some other local cultural quirks as well, the island is a thorn in the side of the religious power- and knowledge-brokers, a persistent and recalcitrant source of heretical anti-Davist ideas. It might even be the source of a new revelation: further messages from Dave himself might lie hidden in the forbidden, unexplored areas of the island.

The book could be read as a fairly obvious lampooning of organized religions based on alleged divine revelations and holy scriptures, but to the author's credit the book really is more than that. It also grapples with the notions of historicity and personhood, knowledge, experience, faith and reason, love and anger and forgiveness, and the meaning of humanness itself.

A friend of mine who's a major history buff and nonfiction reader once mentioned that he was in the mood to read a bit of fiction, and I instantly recommended The Book of Dave without even doing a full reference interview. It's a challenging book that I'd recommend to anyone intelligent, analytical, and curious. The book is on par with one of my other all-time favorites, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, and I am hereby officially putting it in my Top 10!

Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth

by Margaret Atwood

This is a brilliant book, one that could be read multiple times and still thrill the mind, one that I'm actually considering purchasing for my home library. (Which would be a pretty big deal: I've only bought two or three books since I started working at a library; although I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 of the library's books at my home, my personal library of owned books is down to about 30 from a high of several hundred a decade ago.)

Margaret Atwood is a genius, and she's Canadian. Does it get any better? I've only read two other of her books — The Handmaid's Tale and The Edible Woman — but I'm quite confident in calling her a genius after reading this book-length essay considering debt and credit as concepts in the spiritual, psychic, historical, symbolic, literary, fiscal, cosmological, and biological realms. You can tell she's crazy well-read, and it's astonishing how much territory she covers and how many threads she weaves in an actually rather short book. I was a tad worried, however, when I reached the last chapter, in which she conducts a thought experiment that transports Ebenezer Scrooge into modern times; I thought it would be strained and dorky, but it turned out OK.

Debt is on the minds of many in the spring of 2009, but Atwood is here to remind us it isn't just dollars and cents, however captivating and/or tragic and/or sustaining those digits are. Even in a time of financial crisis — or perhaps even more so — it's well worth taking the time to consider the deeper meaning of debt-as-archetype and how deeply embedded it is in the way we live now.

Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea

by Chelsea Handler

Ooh, I love me some Chelsea! Girlfriend cracks my shit up. And, she's the reason I haven't told the cable company that I'm not getting some channels I'm supposed to get — because if I tell them that, they might realize I'm getting some channels I'm not supposed to get, namely E!, which is how I get to watch Chelsea's show, Chelsea Lately. She has a sharp sense of humor, and her show is a great source for celebrity-type gossip, which she mocks mercilessly. She and I also share an affection for "nuggets," aka midgets.

I first came across this book, and fell in love with the title, before I'd ever seen the show. There was a long waiting list for the book, and in the meantime I discovered my illicit cable channels and discovered the comic brilliance that is Chelsea Lately. When the book finally turned up on hold for me, I was so excited that I jumped it to the top of my to-read list, even though I should have been finishing a different book that was already overdue. I figured I could read it pretty quickly, and boy did I ever; I basically read the entire thing in one afternoon.

Definitely some laugh-out-loud moments, but all in all I was actually kinda disappointed. I think a huge part of Chelsea's charm is in her delivery, so now I'm wishing I'd gotten the audio book instead. It's like that with a lot of authors in the "humorous personal essay" genre, people such as David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell: no matter how funny they are on paper, it'll always be funnier to hear them reading aloud.

Manga, Yaoi, and Sequels — oh my!

Here's one of the things I love about manga: last night I read three books! (Even a really, really good nonfiction book takes a couple of days at least.) Since all three are parts of series-es, two of which I've already written up, I'm going to combine them into one post.

Il Gatto Sul G., vol. 2
by Tooko Miyagi
I wrote about the first volume (here) just a few months ago, even though I'd read it quite some time before. I didn't remember it that well, although I had a vague sense of not liking it too much. But O!M!G! am I glad I decided to read the second one. The story's getting more interesting, a new character has entered the picture, the romantic-erotic tension has been taken up a notch, and the overall tone is a little more serious. Only problem is, now I want to read the third installment, but my library doesn't have it yet, and there's only one library in the UK that has it in the interlibrary loan database. Grrrr.

Boys Be, second season, vol. 14
by Masahiro Itabashi
I've already read several in this series (very short post here) and even watched a couple of DVDs. I enjoyed them, because they're cute and funny, but I wasn't invested in trying to read the whole series. After having volume 14 checked out for a long time, I finally got around to reading it — and what a nice surprise! These mini-stories of teen boy lust and longing are still funny, charming, and mostly innocent, but it may be that the series has gotten more risque as the volume numbers have climbed. Still PG-13, but closer to NC-17 than any of the others I've read.

Hero-Heel, vol. 2
by Makoto Tateno
I haven't actually written up the first one yet — it's among the 50-plus titles on which I'm behind (tee-hee! I typed "behind") — so consider this my review for both. The protagonist is a talented but inexperienced actor on a TV action show sort of in the vein of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. Tormented by an unrequited lust for his co-star, he manipulates and blackmails his way into the older man's bed, only to suffer an even more crushing rejection. Thus ends act one. Still obsessed in the next installment, our "hero" begins a tortured, torrid affair with a different actor on the show; meanwhile, his on- and off-screen nemesis seems to be reuniting with an old flame. Just when it looks as if everyone is going to be mature and considerate for once, a sucker-punch ending sets the reader to wondering once again: "who is the hero and who is the heel?"

The author of this series is a manga super-star whose other series include Yellow (which I'm about to start), Ka Shin Fu, and Steal Moon. And, BTW, the Hero-Heel series is not quite pornographic, but it is as explicit as it gets without actually showing genitalia.

Descartes' Bones: a skeletal history of the conflict between faith and reason

by Russell Shorto

Wow! Beautiful literary nonfiction about one of my favorite subjects. (See also my posts about The End of Faith and The Closing of the Western Mind; in addition, I haven't written about it, but not too long ago I really enjoyed a DVD lecture series called Tools of Thinking: Understanding the World through Experience and Reason.)

This book is more entertaining than academic, but it's absolutely chock full of facts — no small number of which I've made an effort to commit to memory for trivia-game purposes. It's also remarkably nonjudgmental about the "conflict" to which the title refers. The author takes an objective, journalistic approach, remembering to anticipate and present the counter-arguments, and saves his speculation for a Sherlockian flourish near the end. (And the speculation has to do with the actual fate of the actual bones, not with any grand metaphor or metaphysical conclusion.)

Ultimately, though, the book isn't about faith versus reason, or radical versus moderate Enlightenment philosophy, it's about the way the conflict itself, which results from and at the same time is the very essence of Cartesian dualism — the often misstated and misunderstood "mind-body problem" — how that duality is at the heart of both theological and secular ideas about the world since Descartes, and how the modern world — everything from scientific advances to the globalization of culture, and much more — grew from the philosopher's great quest for a solid foundation on which to build the edifices of knowledge.

Final analysis: highly readable, surprisingly smooth and quick given some of the weighty ideas it explores; short-listed for my nonfiction Top 10, if I ever get around to making such a list.

Falling Boy

by Alison McGhee

I don't know why this isn't a young adult novel. It's the right length, and it's the right kind of story. The protagonist is a teen who uses a wheelchair ever since the accident — you know, the accident he refuses to talk about. He's somewhat estranged from his father and weirdly obsessed with his absent mother, he has a wise-cracking slightly older buddy, and there's even a preternaturally wise and observant little girl who thinks he's a superhero using the wheelchair as a disguise.

Overall rating: meh.

The Stuff of Thought: Language as a window into human nature

by Steven Pinker

Ahhhh, I finally found the psycholinguistics book I've been looking for! I've read a few other books on language (How Language Works, by David Crystal; and I think the other one was Empires of the Word, by Nicholas Ostler) that were interesting in their own ways, but this was the jackpot.

You might be aware of the idea that language can limit or determine the way we think, that if a language lacks certain concepts or grammatical structures (or has ones another language does not have), the speakers of that language don't or can't have those mental concepts because they don't just speak that language, they actually think in that language too. Classic examples are Amazonian tribes that don't have words for numbers higher than two; North American Indian tribes that lack future tense; and the habitual case in Black American English, sometimes called Ebonics (i.e., He be in the kitchen, meaning he is habitually or often in the kitchen, vs. He [is] in the kitchen, meaning he happens to be in the kitchen at the moment).

At first glance, it's stunningly obvious — just try thinking something that isn't words or at least accompanied by words in your mind — and also staggeringly consequential — no wonder it's so difficult to communicate across cultural barriers! But it's also pretty pointless, in a way. Knowing it doesn't serve any purpose, doesn't free your mind from the prison of language, doesn't help the peoples of the world finally to get along and live in peace. Also, it turns out to be not really true, or at least not true in the way most people understand it.

Pinker turns the idea on its head and shows how analyzing language can reveal things about the way we think. That's where the psycholinguistics and conceptual semantics come in. There's a ton of fascinating information in this book, so I'm not going to try to summarize it. I will say, however, that I found the first two-thirds of the book more interesting; I especially liked the sections discussing grammar vis-à-vis our mental concepts of space and time, as well as the chapter on metaphor. The last two chapters deal with broader issues of pragmatics, taboo words, conversation strategies, etc.

Microcosm: E. coli and the new science of life

by Carl Zimmer

This is the greatest kind of science writing: science-y enough to satisfy the nerd in you, easy enough to be understood by the dunce in you. It will give you an appreciation of the amazing complexity of single-cell organisms, and particularly the fascinating history of E. coli, which has been front and center for most of the advances in biology over the last 50-plus years.

Did you know there are more microbes living in your gut — allowing you to digest and absorb things you couldn't otherwise — than there are cells in the rest of your body? So who's really in charge, where do you end and the bugs begin; talk about being one with the universe!

Another thing that really struck me was the complexity of the E. coli metabolism, a wicked network of alternatives and redundancies that allow thte organism to adapt and survive in harsh and constantly changing conditions. On the face of things, it seems obvious that humans and other "higher order" animals are more complex: we have more parts; we can do more (visible) things; we appear to shape and control our environment; we plan, think, and solve. But looking at a (very simplified) diagram of the E. coli metabolism, it occurred to me that a metabolism is a network, and just as the neural network of the human brain gives us intelligence, the complexity of the E. coli metabolism represents a certain kind of unconscious, cumulative intelligence at the cellular level.

Then again, some strains of E. coli can kill you, or at least put you under house arrest, in a manner of speaking.

Spud, the Madness Continues...

by John van de Ruit

(See my post about the previous book in the series here.)

Man, I freakin' loved the first book in this series. The second one is also quite good, but with some fairly major drawbacks.

I still really love the protagonist, young John "Spud" Milton, but I also found myself getting annoyed with him for not realizing that one of his friends is actually a complete tool whom I, as of the middle of this second book, cannot stand. I don't want to dwell on the why's and what-for's, but I really hope Spud will eventually recognize that this guy is a spoiled-rich-kid narcissistic bully and heroically stand up to him, in the manner of Tom Brown's Schooldays (for the record, I've only seen the movie and haven't read the book).

There are some hopeful signs that Spud himself is maturing, and I'm optimistic that the slight increase in homophobic behavior and post-apartheid racist backlash in the book is more reflective of Spud's growing sensitivity to such things, and of the time period in which the book is set, than it is indicative of what's to come.

On a related note, a friend of mine, who doesn't normally read anything like this at all, stumbled across the first book and really enjoyed it. The third one isn't published yet, and I'll probably have to interlibrary loan it, but I certainly will.

Confessions of a Mask

by Yukio Mishima

I'm not sure how to begin to tell you how gee-dee amazing this book is...but it's going in my Top 10. It's got that literary feeling. You can tell it's capital-letter Great and Classic even as you read it, but it doesn't seem old-fashioned or stuffy, and it isn't boring. It's very emotional, in fact, and it made me cry. It's also quite different from the Western canon of important novels.

Mishima was a renaissance man: poet, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, actor. In post-WWII Japan he was a well-known celebrity and cultural hero. He embraced some aspects of modernity and Western culture, but he also called for a return to traditional samurai-esque values of courage, honor, and independence — the latter being particularly important in the years after Japan's humbling defeat and disarmament. He committed ritual suicide in 1970 during a failed attempt to take over a Japanese military base, an act he had hoped would inspire a coup d'etat and return power to the imperial throne.

Mishima's second novel, published in 1948 when he was 24, Confessions of a Mask is a semi-autobiographical account of a young latent homosexual who conceals his true nature from society. The author's own sexual orientation remains subject to debate, although in some ways it was also an "open secret", as if he were the Jodi Foster of 1940s Japan. Reading the parts of the novel in which the protagonist wrestles with his desires, tries to intellectualize them away, ignores and denies them, gives in to them, it's difficult to imagine all that was written by someone who hadn't felt those feelings himself. (Then again, a lot of people were fooled by J.T. Leroy and other fakesters.) If he were a gay man determined to stay closeted, that could also explain at least part of his attraction to the rigid discipline of military life and bushido.

I also highly recommend the amazing film called Mishima: a life in four chapters.

Action Philosophers: the lives and thoughts of history's A-list brain trust told in a hip and humorous fashion, vol. 1

by Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey

Graphic novels and comics (and manga too) are sometimes praised as the wedge that can get teens and other reluctant readers reading — content be damned, as long as they're reading something! And then of course you might be able to trick them into learning something by reading a graphic version of Shakespeare or Moby-Dick or whatever. I've even seen graphic presentations of chemistry and other science subjects, for all those "visual learners" out there. (I sort of agree, but I also sort of think it's baloney. I mean, the mental effort and discipline, and the imagination involved in reading a novel as a novel — and lots of other kinds of words-only reading — has educational and intellectual value beyond just knowing the story.)

Action Philosophers is a fun way for anyone to learn the bullet points of major figures in philosophy. If you like to think of yourself as well-rounded, widely-read, culture, erudite, etc., this series would be a great way to get exposure to philosophers and their ideas without having to read an introduction to philosophy book; the graphic format might even help lodge some of the info in your cranium. Serious students of philosophy need not apply, but I'd say there's enough info even for a very short report or essay.

This volume 1 collects numbers 1-3 of the original comic book series. Included are Plato, Bodhidharma, Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Jefferson, St. Augustine, Ayn Rand, Sigmund Freud, C.G. Jung, and Joseph Campbell.

Working Stiff: the misadventures of an accidental sexpert

by Grant Stoddard

This book is one of those pulp-y sort of memoirs, often humorous, written by people far to young to be writing memoirs. There's probably a word for it in the publishing industry, those books by young-ish people about interesting episodes in their lives — strange and/or terrible job and/or boss; a year of doing or not doing something most people take for granted; something extreme or weird has made me wise beyond my years; etc. etc. etc. It's also an example of another odd species of the publishing world: the magazine/newspaper/online column or blog re-packaged as a book with little or no new material. Light, amusing reading, nothing wrong with that.

All that sounds pretty negative, doesn't it? The book is quite funny and engagingly written, in fact, despite being what it is. I never read this guy's Nerve.com column, so I can't actually say how much new material is in the book, but it seems to talk a lot about his research and writing process in a way that seemed as if it wouldn't have been part of his articles as originally published. The stuff about his immigration issues and other background is also fresh material, I'd imagine. I also instantly liked him because he's British, and kinda short for a guy.

After following a girlfriend to the U.S., the author falls into a job as a sort of sexual guinea pig for an erotic website. (Actually erotic, with literary pretensions and all, rather than pornographic, but also intentionally edgy and risque.) He gets sent to fetish balls and group sex parties, missions to test pick-up lines, nudist camp, asked to try sex toys and female condoms with his girlfriend — that kind of stuff — culminating in his final assignment: to mold a dildo from his own penis (there's a kit for that) and have a lady friend strap it on and screw him with it.

The Thirteenth Tale

by Diane Setterfield

If you want the excitement and suspense of a "thriller" without the spies, terrorists, viruses, or serial killers, this might be the book for you. It's a gothic Victorian-ish story with ghosts, twins, probably incest, bastards, foundlings, cats, skeletons, a governess, scars, a fire, a blizzard on the moors. It's very gripping and exciting, and I got really into it and had a hard time putting it down. (Unfortunately, I got interrupted really close to the end and couldn't get back to it for several days, which deflated the ending a bit for me — so make sure you plan enough time to read through to the end once it gets going.)

It feels as if a certain kind of teenage girl would really like this book. What comes to mind as a comparison, aside from Jane Eyre, is Gentlemen and Players, which caused me to get sunburned because I was so engrossed I forgot to turn over.

Addendum: I just realized it could also be compared to Special Topics in Calamity Physics, which I've previously compared to The Secret History.

The Cult of the Amateur: how today's Internet is killing our culture

by Andrew Keen

I'm kind of glad I didn't write up this one immediately after I read it. Nonfiction books are difficult to review to begin with, and with a book like this one there's also the danger of getting bogged down in a point-by-point argument for or against whatever the book is for or against.

Anyway, this guy made a bunch of money in the original, Clinton-era interwebs bubble, spent some time trumpeting the salvational virtues of the web, managed to get out without losing his shirt, and has now written a book warning of the perils of Web 2.0 technology. Pretty much the usual arguments (Google is making us stupid; YouTube is sometimes amusing and almost always useless; Wikipedia isn't reliable enough; the "wisdom of the crowd" isn't actually all that wise; if no one pays for music and anyone can put their crappy songs on Myspace, there's no way for the good stuff to rise above the crap; etc.), all of which have some validity, up to a point. As in all polemics, some of his points are overstated, in order to draw attention and... to make a point. It's a pretty short book, so worth a gander if these issues are of interest to you; in any case, it won't be a huge waste of time.

I agree that Google is making us stupid, but I also know that, most of the time, Google does the trick. I also think cell phones weaken the memory — how many phone numbers do you have memorized now that you have a cell? I hate it that so many things on the web are video, because I like to read and because it isn't always convenient to watch/listen. (Not to mention that it's kind of lazy for "citizen journalists" and bloggers to just post the clip instead of making the effort to describe something in words.)

Ultimately, however, I believe that both the boosters/futurists and the negative nellies are right, and wrong. I just hope I die before everything goes video.

Tell Me Everything: a novel

by Sarah Salway

The protagonist of this book is a pathological liar — unless she's so delusional that she doesn't realize she's lying — or may she's just lying to herself too. In theory, I guess, it's an interesting exploration of truth and truth-telling, growing up and learning the rules of shared reality, make-believe as essential to the construction of a self... but ultimately I just found the character annoying, willful, stupid, mean, self-destructive: in a word, a teenager, but with all that stuff magnified and laid bare. Looking back I'm kind of surprised that I didn't quit reading it. I think maybe I was waiting for the big "reveal" at the end, but I didn't really feel the impact, maybe because I wasn't invested in (or impressed by) the character's ambition to create a new life for herself, because I didn't feel her pain.

The character's quasi-fugue escapism reminds me a bit of The Dive from Clausen's Pier, in which a young woman runs away from dealing with her fiance's paralyzing injury — a real trauma, even if the physical trauma is not her own. In this book, however, it's never entirely clear if any real trauma serves as motivation, or if attention-seeking behavior manufactures a a justification for itself.

What-the-Dickens: the story of a rogue tooth fairy

by Gregory Maguire

This guy has made quite the career out of re-telling traditional fairy tales and such from new perspectives:

• Wicked is The Wizard of Oz told from the point of view of the Wicked Witch of the West (it has a sequel, Son of a Witch — arguably better than its parent book — and it has been made into a critically-acclaimed musical, currently touring the nation, which itself spawned a reality TV spin-off);


• Mirror Mirror is an Italian Renaissance-and-incest version of the story of Snow White;


• Lost, which I never got around to reading, takes a new look at Ebenezer Scrooge;


• just out in 2008, A Lion Among Men revisits Dorothy's cowardly pal from Oz;


• and my favorite, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister (you should be catching on by now; need I explain?), was made into a Lifetime television movie starring Stockard Channing. (Yes, I worship her; no, she is not the reason this book is my favorite of Maguire's.)

He's also written many books for younger readers, and What-the-Dickens is one of the longer ones. It's the story of a tooth fairy (more of a pixie or sprite, actually, with more of an animal nature than your typical Disney-style flowery fairy) struggling to grow up and discover himself outside the society of other tooth fairies — sort of a fish-out-of-water or raised-by-wolves kinda thing — and eventually challenging the traditions and strictures of what turns out to be a rather oppressive tooth fairy community.

The story of this rogue tooth fairy is told within another story: the tale is being told by a young man to his younger neice and nephew, whom he's left with during an unspecified and possibly apocalyptic storm or catastrophe while the children's parents have gone in search of food and help. This wrap-around story was kind of unnecessary, but not really bothersome. I think the author explained the reason for it in an interview on Fresh Air, but I don't recall what he said. If i were going to read this book aloud to kids, I'd probably just leave it out.
Good ratings overall, not awesome but very enjoyable. Should be appealing to fans of Artemis Fowl and the like.

Don't Say Any More, Darling

by Fumi Yoshinaga

Fumi Yoshinaga might be the greatest yaoi manga author/illustrator ever! The art is exquisite, the stories compelling, the whole package simply amazing. I'm in the middle of the Antique Bakery series, and I'm loving it. Don't Say Any More, Darling is a collection of short pieces — gay (with some R-rated scenes), sorta gay, not even gay — and I really enjoyed them all. They're realistic, poignant, artfully composed. I've read short stories by renowned authors, "masters of the craft," that aren't as good stories as these; the beautiful illustration only adds to their greatness.

If you like yaoi, if you like romantic, emotional manga, you simply must read this. I'll give a Top 10 Manga rating.

Same-cell Organism

by Sumomo Yumeka

Argh! I can't believe I'm still so far behind. This is another one that I read long enough ago to have forgotten. It's from the same publisher as some other high-quality yaoi I've read, but I recall this one being a bit dull, even though the artwork is beautiful. I read a review just now that jogged my memory a bit, reminding me that the "main" story about two young men in love is interrupted by chapters that seemed totally disconnected to me (other than being about boys love) but, according to the reviewer, are sort of allegorical representations of different aspects of the main characters' relationship. Ultimately, there's better out there, so I wouldn't recommend this unless you've already read all the really good ones.

On Subbing: the first four years

by Dave Roche

One of the longest zines I've ever read, and among the first. All about the author's experiences a substitute teacher's aide in a large metropolitan school district on the West coast somewhere between Seattle and San Francisco. (I no longer recall if he actually specifies, but it's Portland for sure.) As a teacher's aide, he works with a lot of troubled and disabled students, probably because most classrooms don't have TAs. It's an interesting, well-written account of type of work and workplace not many of us will ever see firsthand. I also learned about the life skills program for developmentally delayed students, some of whom stay in the program until age 21, that was of use to me at my work, where some of these young adults hang out and/or visit as a group. As far as I'm concerned, this zine is a classic.

From Eroica with Love

by Yasuko Aoike

I've read the first four books in this series so far, here and there over the last two years, but recent clean-up efforts led me to re-read parts of 2 and 3, and all of book 4 in the last two days. Now I'm really into it, and I've made hold requests to get the remaining books, 5 through 14, that my library owns.

It's classic Cold War-era manga originally published in the late '70s. Eroica (aka Earl Dorian Red Gloria) is a flamboyant, hedonistic, homosexual, aristocratic art thief. His nemesis is NATO officer Major Klaus von dem Eberbach (aka Iron Klaus), whose rigid Teutonic nature is at odds with his shoulder-length hair and bangs. (Of course, fashions that seem feminine or androgynous to a modern reader weren't necessarily considered un-masculine in the '60s and '70s — think long hair, bell-bottoms, velour, V-necks, and angel sleeves.)

Iron Klaus, of course, despises Eroica and his louche ways, while the Earl, of course, lusts after the Major. To the officer's chagrin, and to the thief's pleasure, their paths are constantly crossed. Or are they in fact star-crossed lovers? Klaus's hatred of Dorian (and queers in general) definitely carries a whiff of "me thinks the lady doth protest too much."

Me, I have a crush on Agent Z.

World War Z: an oral history of the zombie war

by Max Brooks

Wow, I'd heard about this book so long ago, and over the years I've suggested it to a few friends but only recently got around to reading it myself. Probably, we're in the decline of the coolness of zombies, but they'll never drop out of the zeitgeist entirely.

The cool thing about this book is sort of captured in the subtitle: it's a collection of interviews of people who lived through and witnessed the zombie-pocalypse. Partly because of that, and also because it's a book instead of a big-budget-special-effects movie, the book offers a more detailed look at aspects of humans vs. zombies that often are left out. It really gets into the practical, military, political, psychological, and moral issues related to battling a worldwide zombie infestation instead of just relying on the inherent scariness of zombies for focus.

I read it pretty quickly, and ravenously. Hard to put down and fun to read, without the careless, uninspired writing that sucks the enjoyment out of a lot of thrillers.

Z for Zachariah

by Robert C. O'Brien

A couple years ago, the library got a paperback copy of this book with a cover that made me think it might have zombies in it. The title, of course, hints at that a little too. The back-cover description doesn't use the Z-word, but it tells of a young woman all alone in a post-apocalyptic world and the arrival of a stranger. So I'm still thinking maybe he's a zombie!

If I'm recalling correctly, it says in the foreword or afterword, or one those kind of things, that the book was actually finished by the author's family for posthumous publication. The story is pretty bleak compared to the author's better-known Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh (itself better-known, perhaps, as The Secret of NIMH, the title of the 1982 animated film). I'd argue that the stories have a lot in common, but this young adult book is definitely less fuzzy and more mature than the cartoon-friendly younger kids' book.

Z for Zachariah doesn't have much explicit violence, but there are references to "off-screen" violence and a pervasive sense of barely-restrained potential violence. Creepy, but no zombies, and with an ending that's either sad, disappointing, or both — which I mean in a positive way, in the sense that it's not a tidy ending or the one you'll find yourself wishing for, even if you think happy endings are lame.

Like zombie or vampire movies, or pretty much anything apocalyptic, it could be considered an allegory and therefore potential book report fodder. It could be read fairly quickly and, I think, would hold the attention of most teens.

Mother's Milk: a novel
     and
Some Hope: a trilogy

by Edward St. Aubyn

I just finished the absolutely stunning Mother's Milk, which features among its protagonists the main character of the trilogy Some Hope, which I read a few years ago. The author has truly mastered the craft of stream-of-consciousness, exposing the mental and emotional lives of his characters in exquisite — sometimes agonizing — detail, but in a way that's perfectly coherent and sympathetic. We're talking Virginia Woolf-style stream of consciousness, not the staccato jibber-jabber or random ramblings that some writers have produced. It's meant to be a stream, after all, flowing and connected.

As you might guess from the author's name, St. Aubyn, he has some other things in common with Woolf: his characters are upper- or upper-middle-class, and they're unfulfilled. They have the sort of first-world crises that it's become fashionable to mock. Now, I suppose it's rather first-world of me, but I don't think one needs a genocidal war or Oprah's-Book-Club-style tragedy to write an interesting book. In fact, I might even go so far as to say that it's a bit cheap and easy to write about a catastrophe of some sort, and more challenging to root out the tiny personal catastrophes and make the reader care about them.

Unlike the novels by Woolf, there's a dark humor and hedonistic ennui woven through the existential angst. In some ways, it reminds me of Douglas Coupland or even Chuck Palahniuk; in particular it brough to mind A Spot of Bother, which I reviewed here.

A strong recommendation for Anglophiles, fans of dysfunctional families, and those looking for something more literary, but still contemporary, than much of today's popular fiction. Some Hope is very good, but Mother's Milk even better — enough to gain a provisional spot in my Top 10.

Stuck Rubber Baby

by Howard Kruse

A powerful, sad, inspiring story that takes good advantage of the graphic novel format. It's not, the author says, autobiographical or semi-autobiographical, and it's not really "inspired by"... you could say, however, that it's informed by the author's experience as a young, white, closeted gay man in the rural South during the early-ish Civil Rights Movement. The chronicle includes his attempts to stay in the closet and his eventual coming out, and it shows the political and social climate and activism of the time.

I have to register one complaint, though, about the artist's drawing style: everybody has huge chins, of the sort traditionally reserved for rugged, masculine types. Everyone having that same chin is a bit weird, and it makes the women in particular seem more butch than I think they're meant to be. (Not that I think all women should have dainty little chins, but some of them should.) Also, a little variety would be nice, just on general principle.

Oh, and I don't totally get the title — but whatevs. I still almost cried.

Crooked Little Vein

by Warren Ellis

"Reading Crooked Little Vein ... is like being hit by a truck — a dark, perverted truck, that, if it's anything like the one described in the book, is full of blind men humping their seeing-eye dogs before being rear-ended by a Miata full of Latino trannies in clown suits."

This line from the review I received in my e-mail one day was seared indelibly into my brain. (You can read the entire review, which was originally published in Esquire, here.) When my friend and colleague who was working on an "If you like Chuck Palahniuk" reading list asked me for suggestions, it was the very first thing that came to mind.

So it was my friend who read it first, and I read it based on his recommendation. It's bizarre, twisted, surreal, gross... and a darn good book that lampoons American politics and our millennial culture (or what passes for culture). Nice and short too. A lot of teens would probably like it, but I'd only recommend to one that I know fairly well, since it contains some pretty effed-up shit that could upset the parental units.

You can see the recently updated Chuck-alike list here.

In the Company of Crows and Ravens

by John M. Marzluff and Tony Angell

This book should be so much better than it is. But it's not. The writing is pretty terrible, bad enough that I didn't actually finish the book. Which is a shame, because I'd recommended it to people. It's dangerous to recommend books one hasn't read yet, but one can't possibly read every book, so sometimes one must. C'est la vie.

I'd heard about how smart corvids are, what with their puzzle-solving and tool use, so I was excited when I saw a copy of this book when it was new. Others already had reserved it, so I had to put my name down on the list and wait my turn. When I eventually got around to reading it, I found the book to contain a wealth of fascinating information that, sadly, is not well-presented. Chapters discuss corvids in human culture and their interrelationships with humans both culturally and ecologically, as well as corvids' own "culture" and social lives. Some of this is rather too esoteric; I think what I had been expecting was a book about how smart and cool and amazing and kinda creepy crows are, with information about experiments that have tested the limits of their intelligence — which is in there, but not straightforwardly.

Another book that seems to be in the same vein came out the same year: Crows: Encounters with the Wise Guys of the Avian World, by Candace Sherk Savage. Maybe it's a little better? But it also seems to stress the angle of "Human-animal relationships" (in LCSH parlance), with personal stories and recollections.

Yet a third book, Crows, by Boria Sax, was published in 2003. It has the subject heading "Animals in civilization" and also seems not as science-y as I'd like. Points for the author's name, though. Boria, according to the Italian Wiktionary at least, means conceit or arrogance, and the OED defines sax as, among other things, a small dagger.

Emo Boy, vol. 1: nobody cares about anything, so why don't we all just die?

by Steve Emond

I first read a wee review of this graphic novel in a Library Journal blog, and thought it sounded cool, so I submitted it as a suggestion for purchase, and now my library owns it. I was super-excited to read it.

The great paradox of emo is that you act as if you don't care, but in fact you feel everything with an overwhelming intensity. Emo Boy is shunned by his classmates, who think he's weird, but it doesn't matter because he can't stand them anyway. His repressed emotions periodically explode, with frightening results. (Not truly scary, funny scary.) The character is, appropriately, alternately endearing and irritating. The artwork has some pleasingly unique flairs, and the writing does a good job capturing that nearly universal teen angst — or at least the way that angst seems in retrospect to those who have outgrown it.

I liked it, but I kind of forgot about it. But I just made a hold request for volume 2, which is about the best kind of endorsement there is.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

by Shirley Jackson

A great gothic novella originally published in 1962, three years before the author's death. I'd never heard of it, though I gather it's fairly famous, but I was instantly intrigued when I saw the cover of the 2006 Penguin Books edition:




Having survived the tragic deaths of the rest of their family, two sisters eke out a bleak existence alone in an isolated mansion, mistrusted and despised by residents of the adjacent village. And it just keeps getting creepier. Very well-written, excellent pacing, and a devastating, claustrophobic conclusion.

I give this a strong recommendation, including the teen-friendly endorsement for it's modest length.

Loveholic, vol. 1
    and
Bónd(z)

by Toko Kawai

Another one — or couple, actually — that I read more than a year ago. This time, a Publisher's Weekly review was just what I needed to refresh my memory for Loveholic. (Bonus: in the process of finding the review, I realized the library has the second volume on order, so I put in a hold request.) I didn't need any help remembering the second one, for reasons that will be clear shortly.

Loveholic is in many ways typical yaoi. As the PW review points out, however, it is of unusually high quality, particularly the depth of character development. A maverick (is it too soon to use the word in earnest?) fashion photographer and a suave ad exec are always butting heads, but their collaborations are all great successes. But of course they're in love with each other! Now I'm re-excited and can't wait to read the next one.

I don't know what's up with the accent and the parentheses, but once I started reading Bónd(z) I really didn't care. And I mean really. The book contains a number of stories, but the main one concerns two male best friends who, after a night of heavy drinking, tumble into bed and get into some heavy petting — with sexy results! Both have girlfriends and some conflicted feelings, but their attraction to one another is undeniable and irresistible. Whereas the sex scenes in Loveholic are R-rated, this one shows it all, including the "money shot" if you know what I mean.

Fatal Faux-Pas
by Samuel C. Gaskin

"A collection of gags, jokes, stories, drawings, and other such nonsense," according to the back cover.

Why you should read this graphic "novel"/comic book:

1. It's cute, only 5x7 inches.
2. The longest narrative is just six pages, so there's no time commitment.
3. Makes fun of King-Cat.
4. A couple of pictures of weenises.
5. "Fonzie's Funnies" — speaks for itself, no?
6. You like Saved by the Bell more than you realize.
7. The inside pages are all printed in purple ink.

The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod:

Eighth Grade Bites
     and
Ninth Grade Slays

by Heather Brewer




When I first saw a copy of Eighth Grade Bites in fall of 2007, I thought the cover was awesome. The baggy black hoodie is so totally how teens dress these days, right? I put it on display by the new young adult books and was dismayed that no one checked it out. After a few weeks it went onto the regular shelves, and I forgot about it.

Fast-forward about nine months, and out of nowhere I realize that Twilight by Stephenie Meyer has hundreds of people on the waiting list and is being made into a movie, some of which is being filmed in Oregon. I remember when the book first came out in 2005, and I remember seeing it languishing on the shelf week after week after week. I also remember the sequel, and I remember wondering why we were getting the second book when the first hadn't been checked out even once.

Even once the hoopla started, I didn't want to read Twilight, because I didn't want to wait and because I'm sometimes turned off just by the fact of something being very popular. The upshot, however, is that all the requests for the Meyer books got me thinking again about the Chronicles of Vladimir Tod. I remembered that I'd kind of wanted to read it, and I figured this would be a great time to do so, because it could be a recommendation to give teens for something to read while they're waiting for or after they've finished Twilight.

These books are pretty short, even for YA. The first one especially could be read in one sitting.(Meyer's books are designed to look longer, but I've heard they're not all that long.) While the writing isn't super and there's a noticeable lack of basic editing ("how's so-and-so fairing?"), as well as some continuity failures (creeping down the hall from one room to another, which were previously described as being on different floors), plus some painfully dumb "creative" choices (vampire communities exist in cities such as Cairo, London, Mexico City, and ... the sprawling metropolis of Stokerton?) — all that notwithstanding, I just about loved these books.

The main character is a sweet, likable kid with a crush on a pretty girl and a couple of bullies who pick on him for being goth. The best thing is the new twist on ye olde vampire story that is the centerpiece of the plot: Vlad's dad was a vampire and his mom was mortal (they're both dead), so he was actually born a vampire instead of made into one by being bitten; vampire lore, meanwhile, tells of a such a vampire being born one day, rising to rule over all other vampires and enslave the entire human race. So, as you can imagine, he's got some enemies in the vampire community. And what about the mystery of his parents' death?

Looking forward to the next installment, Tenth Grade Bleeds, in July 2009!

Il Gatto Sul G.

by Tooko Miyagi

This is a two-volume (as far as I know) series from Juné Manga, which publishes some really fantastic boys-love stories, particularly of the romantic and relatively innocent variety. (Such as Only the Ring Finger Knows and Rin!) I read it more than a year ago, so my recollection is a bit hazy, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't that into it. There's this annoying thing where the character would turn (entirely or partially) into a cat as an expression of certain emotions. I don't know how common that is in manga, but I know there's a definite sub-genre, so I suppose some people don't find it irritating the way I do. (How fine is the line between cosplay and furry?) Other than that, it is a fairly typical boys-love set up: young men of slightly different ages, a bit of power imbalance, confused longings and unclear motivations. In this case, the younger character has, or may have, serious psychological problems.

Final judgement? It's worth a shot if you like yaoi manga. Heck, I just requested the second volume so I can give it another chance.

Boy2Girl

by Terence Blacker

I don't want to fall behind while catching up, so here's one that I only just finished reading.

It's kind of awful, but I also kind of loved it. The premise is preposterous, and the writing — well, it's hard to tell because the perspective skips from character to character every few paragraphs, which I found intensely irritating and unnecessary. When I read the first 10 or so pages before bed one night, I wasn't sure I'd be able to finish it, that's how bad it seemed. But the next night, I finished the entire book in one sitting, during which I laughed out loud several times and found myself grinning a lot. And I totally swear I only had one beer.

An orphaned American boy moves to live with auntie/uncle/cousin in London; ridiculously, cousin and his friends make American boy dress as a girl for the first week of school. If you can make it past that, you'll get some funny bits. The cross-dressing boy turns out to be pretty cute as a girl, with long blond(e) hair and a small frame. He fancies himself a tough guy, so the way he gets into flipping his hair, swishing his skirt, and wearing a training bra is amusing. The funniest, though, was how this brash and tom-boyish seventh-grader captures the attention of the twelfth-grade lothario. Oh, yeah, and he inherits 2 million dollars, and his long-lost jailbird dad turns up looking to cash in, but sort of turns out to be a decent guy following the impregnation of his new former-stripper wife.

Like I said, ridiculous, but somehow I enjoyed it, the way you can sometimes enjoy a really really really dumb romantic comedy film that you get on Netflix and watch by yourself because you're too embarrassed to admit to anyone that you want to watch it.

The Headmaster Ritual

by Taylor Antrim

How weird is this? In the shower this morning, I was thinking how cathartic it was to finish the zine roundup yesterday and how I was feeling optimistic and into doing this reading journal after months of indifference. Knowing I have a big backlog, I started thinking about what to do when it came time to write about a book I read a while back and didn't really remember or have strong feelings about. The example that came to mind: The Headmaster Ritual.

So, I'm not sure why I wanted to read it in the first place, I think maybe it was reviewed in the New York Times Book Review. I also tend to enjoy books with boarding school as the setting. (Spud is a good example.) And since I don't have a strong memory of the book, I have to wonder if it's worth doing any research to remind myself, or if it's worth writing anything about it at all.

I just found the NYTBR article on the interwebs (here), and it's not very illuminating. It's not that positive of a review, so what made me want to read the book?

As I work through my backlog, I suppose I'll get better or find a better way of dealing with this situation if it comes up again. And perhaps I'll catch up and never fall behind again and not have to worry about it ever again. (One can dream...)

Another zine roundup

So, it's been ages. I'm terribly behind with this reading journal. I haven't even been reading at my accustomed pace, and I've still got a backlog of dozens of books. I've also read a bunch of zines, mostly stuff that's new to the library's collection. Since I'm so far behind, I'm gonna do this quick and dirty, as they say. Sorry for not linking the titles, but gimme a break, will ya?

Prepubescent, by Ms. Zine
Not comprehensive sex ed. for boys, more anecdotal, but an interesting look at a mother-son relationship on the "pre-" side of puberty. Could be read by sons and/or parents or anyone who interacts with that age group. Favorite part: son asks mom why guys like to look at boobs; mom says, I don't know, you're a guy so you tell me why (or ask another guy; and if you really don't know yet, you'll figure it out soon enough).

Frat-bot and Cod and Thingpart Sampler #5 by Joe Sayers
Love this guy's comic strips from the weekly paper. The sampler is a collection of those strips, while the other is a group of longer vignettes featuring the eponymous characters, all with Sayers' trademark twisted humor. My fave of his strips (not in these, but on my friend's refrigerator): little girl begs mom for a pony, mom agrees, little girl cheers; in the final panel, the little girl is holding a knife and fork, crying in front of a piece of meat, and mom says "shut up and finish your pony."

Phase 7, #s 010, 011, 012, by Alec Longstreth
Great mini-comic about the author's development as a comics artist and zinester, so it's doubly meta: a comic about comics and a zine about zines. Which doesn't make it sound as cool as it is. I don't know how else to explain except to say that you'll feel as if you're catching up with a friend you haven't seen in a while.

The Way Things Used to Be and Argyle, by Erica Schreiner
Argyle tells the story of an intense and relatively brief love affair. I never could tell if it's a true story or not; it has the dreamy sort of feel of something not really imagined but more like a gilded remembrance. The Way Things Used to Be is a gripping first-person narrative of family, social, and romantic issues in senior year of high school. I would totally recommend this to teens of any gender, cuz it feels so real.

The Fart Party, by Julia Wertz
Hilarious mini-comic about slacker/hipster angst. Don't remember which ones (1, 4, or 7) I read, but I got giggles from both. She almost moves to Portland (yay!) but goes to Brooklyn instead. (Boo!)

Big Plans, Nos. 1-3, by Aron Nels Steinke
Completely charming mini-comics relating more or less ordinary events in the life of a young man. But just so effing charming! There's no other word. I have a crush on Aron after reading these.

Hey Tim: five letters, by Bob Wenzel
Poop-your-pants funny! Bob has Crohn's disease and sends letters to his son Tim about some of his extreme potty emergencies, Tim illustrates them and puts out a zine. Not for the squeamish, but if the word "poop" makes you giggle, you're gonna love it. (Crohn's disease isn't funny, and we shouldn't laugh at people who have it. But shit happens, and sometimes all you can do is hold on to your sense of humor.)

Somnambulist #10, by Martha Grover
"The Portland Issue" of highly readable short stories by Grover and others. I also read #7, which relates the smoking and quitting stories of an extended family, most of whom have smoked or still do smoke cigarettes. The smoking issue is more free-form, with less writing and more illustrations. Both are worth the time.

Crudbucket #6, by K.T. Crud
So freaking hilarious. It's "the hodgepodge issue," full of random funny stories. (Not sure how it compares to other issues.) If her last name weren't Crud, it'd have to be Sedaris. Definitely in my Top 10 of humorous zines.

Constant Rider #8, by Kate Lopresti
Oftentimes I like it that zines are short, but this is one I wish were longer. I'm kind of a transportation/urban planning geek, but I think these mini-reports about public transportation are interesting enough for any reader. I've also read #7, and soon the library will have the omnibus.

Superman Stories #2, by Mark Russell
Another entry in the Top 10 humorous zines, along with the first installment. In comic books, movies, television shows, you only get the highlights of a character's life. These zines fill in the blanks with things you never knew you wanted to know about Superman's real life.

Monsters #1-2 and Gordon Smalls Goes to Jail: an act of comicide, by Ken Dahl
Unintentionally giving your girlfriend herpes (and realizing how ignorant you both are about STIs) can make you feel like a monster, as explained in this well-written and highly imaginative comics series. Then, to cheer yourself up, read a realistically harsh and yet somehow also funny comic about spending the night in the clink. Eff the pigs, right? But you're better off not effing with them cuz it really sucks to get busted.

Wierd Sea Creatures of the Sea: focus on narwhal and Homobody #1-3, by Rio Safari
The genius of WSCS is that it's partially true, partially made up, and all precious: an illustrated bonbon of infotainment. Can't wait to see more creatures! The Homobody series consists of single panels and mini-comics relating incidents in the life of a young, gay, punk guy. Often sweet and romantic, totally crush-worthy.

Coffeeshop Crushes: tales of love and lust in coffee establishments (anthology)
I wish I had a copy on hand so I could give you this great quote about the peculiar pscyho-sexual appeal of skinny, pale, blank barista boys. A spotty anothology, but the gems in there are worth looking for — just be sure to give yourself permission to skip around and not read every single entry.

SteamPunk Magazine: lifestyle, mad science, theory & fiction (various authors)
If you've never heard of "steampunk," flip through some of these. If you adore old-fashioned "technology," then revel in these. If nothing else, interesting as evidence of a little-known subculture, and every issue has at least one cool DIY project.

Xploited Zine, Issue 002: public restrooms (anthology)
Reviews and related stories about places to go when you have to "go" in San Francisco. You don't have to live there to find it amusing or informative, though it might help.

Avow #22, by Keith Rosson
Intense confessionals (true?) about living and loving and struggling with addictions. Quality writing compensates for sort of depressing subject matter.

Mary Van Note's Experiences (of the sexual variety) vol. 1, by Mary Van Note
As George Michael once sang, "sex is natural, sex is fun...". Sex is also weird, occasionally icky, and frequently hilarious in this collection of bizarre recollections of sexual awakening.

Dancing with Jack Ketch: the life of Jackson Donfaire, notorious pirate, by Josh Shalek
Not a true story, as far as one quick Google can tell, which is shame. All about an escaped slave turned castaway-cook and pirate captain who returns a ship full of slaves to Africa, it would be great if it were true. Hard to put my finger on exactly why, but I found it overall a bit disappointing.

Mishap #21, by Ryan Mishap
Classic perzine out of Eugene, really runs the gamut. I liked reading the book reviews way more than I expected, and the interview with the lead singer of a Scandinavian, Middle-Earth-themed (yes, as in Tolkien) heavy metal band was a hoot.

Standard Deviation #1, by J.V. Whimper
A brilliant little science zine that's just too darn short. A little miscellanea, a touch of Q&A, and lovely wee lab report of sorts. Would love to see more, and longer ones, in the future.

Glossolalia No. 9, by Sarah Contrary
Lyrical and eloquent meditations on what makes New York and Portland special, each in their own ways. Too bad Sarah doesn't live in Portland anymore! Glad we got her to do a Zinesters Talking (2007) while she was still here.

Messenjerk: Lords of the Extreme, by Natalie Yager
Non-stop making fun of bike messenger culture, especially those ridiculous fixies. Funny cuz it's true, and even when it's exaggerated or made up, still funny cuz it's at someone else's expense. Not sure how actual messenjerks feel about it, tho.

Time Is the Problem #1, by Jim Lowe
Didn't finish this one. Too much non-religious spirituality and life-really-has-meaning. My not liking it is more a matter of my constitution and (lack of) beliefs than a function of the zine's quality, which (see previous) I'm not equipped to judge.

Proust and the Squid: the story and science of the reading brain

by Maryanne Wolf

I've read a bunch of other books about brains, so I was really excited to read this book. It turned out to be a little less science-y than I was expecting, and somewhat repetitive in certain sections, but overall it was a worthwhile read. What I took away from the experience is not so much a feeling for the science as an appreciation of the complexity of the reading process and, consequently, how many opportunities there are for failures in learning to read.

The author covers what is known of the history and origin of writing, and therefore reading, including Socrates' arguments against written language. There's also discussion of how readers of different kinds of languages — alphabetic, logographic, syllabic, etc. — utilize different brain structures and can form different kinds of connections among parts of their brains, as well as mention of how eye movements and use of peripheral vision allow the reader continuously to scan ahead and behind instead of focussing letter by letter or word by word. (Although it may feel as if you're only aware of one or a few words at a time, this kind of scanning and awareness is essential for understanding grammar and for selecting meanings and pronunciations of individual words.)

The middle portion of the book talks about the different stages of learning to read: from phonemic awareness in the pre-reader; through sounding out words and understanding how individual sounds are joined together to form words (as well as the correspondence between letters and various sounds); grasping increasingly complex grammatical and narrative structures; all the way to fluent, nearly unconscious reading that allows even higher levels of emotional and intellectual engagement and interpretation.

The section discussing dyslexia and other reading problems, in which the author suggest that non-standard brain functioning that results in reading difficulties might confer other advantages by fostering other ways of thinking and imagining — witness the many geniuses and artists believed or known to have been dyslexic — this section was less interesting to me.

The end of the book just dips into a subject I've been very interested in lately: how is technology and media affecting the way we think and the ways our brains function? Harkening back to Socrates, the author acknowledges that it's all to easy to distrust the future, only to find out the dooms-day predictions were unfounded, but she also makes it clear that we're in a time of increasingly rapid changes to how we produce, store, and consume information, and it would behoove us to conscientiously examine what's worth preserving even as we adapt to the ineluctable transformations.

One thing Socrates warned against regarding written language was the potential for false and unfounded belief in the apparent truthfulness of the printed word, simply because it's printed. Some modern intellectuals see the same danger today in many people's willingness to accept the validity of the first one or two Google results — a danger compounded by the fact that those results are manipulable by site owners, and that Google's customer is the advertiser not the searcher.

Socrates also worried that the ability to record information (and then, presumably, to forget it) would lead to degraded memory and intellectual abilities. To the contrary, the advent of written language opened up new mental terrain, perhaps in part because the brain adaptations required for reading (new connections among brain parts, analytical speed and precision in multiple brain areas, etc.) allowed the thinking brain to make new conjectures and associations. (The simple fact of having recorded knowledge in itself facilitated juxtaposition, interpolation, expansion, and creation of ideas.)

So what happens to our brains now, faced with an exponentially expanding store of knowledge and a technology to access that information that divides attention and replaces self-made inferences and connections with the illusion of endless connectivity, links, and tangents? The effects surely aren't all bad, but there is cause for concern The author and I aren't the only ones thinking about this: check out these articles from NPR and the BBC.

Now, I realize this post is getting pretty long (partly why I gave you the links instead of summarizing myself), but I want to go on a little tirade before I wrap it up. Something I thought about while reading this book is the phenomenon of people who say "I'm a visual learner". Of course, all sorts of input, including audio-visual and experiential, can be valuable ways of learning. I have a nagging sense, however, that "I'm a visual learner" is too often a smoke screen concealing the truth that "I don't read well and my reading comprehension is not what it should be". This bothers me because there's the connected phenomenon of saying it's OK for students not to be able to read well and/or to watch a video as a substitute for reading because they are visual learners. Furthermore, given the multimedia nature of the interwebs, technology and "2.0" boosters have a tendency to glorify visual learning as the future and salvation of learning and teaching. I've actually heard a speaker at a conference suggest it would be better to have a medical procedure from someone who watched a video about how to do it as opposed to someone who read about how to do it in a textbook. I don't know about you, but I'd like to think medical professionals are doing more than one or the other! False analogies aside, I'm a little suspicious of the video-watcher; if they have poor reading comprehension, surely that has implications for their other mental capacities and their capability in general.

Soon I Will Be Invincible

by Austin Grossman

"My first act will be to demand the surrender of all the governments of Earth, via the United Nations Security Council. You have no alternative. Legal details of this process can be found on my web site."

So states Dr. Invincible, the evil supergenius who narrates half of this hilariously entertaining book. The other narrator is Fatale (fuh-tahl, not fay-tal), a half-cyborg woman recently recruited to join a team of superheroes. It sounds frivolous — and so what if it is — but there are quite a few aspects of human nature that can be illuminated by considering what it would mean to be meta-human. (X-men, duh!) The author does a great job of portraying the interior monologues and motivations of both characters, and does a particularly good job of making the reader sympathize with Dr. Invincible. (Or maybe that's just me; after all, I am 74% evil.)

American Nerd: the story of my people

by Benjamin Nugent

While the author makes no pretense of this being a scholarly approach to the history of nerd-dom, it does begin with what seems to be a reasonably comprehensive survey of the origin and early uses of not only the word but the very concept itself. It starts out literary-historical, but when the explication arrives at the recent past it gets a bit bogged down in the minutiae of certain pop culture instances of nerdiness.

The next phase is more philosophical and looks at contemporary cultures of nerditude; I particularly enjoyed the chapter that discusses the way hipsters co-opt aspects of nerd culture.

There's a thread of the author's personal life as a nerd throughout the book, and it continues to grow stronger, eventually forming the central theme of the final third of the book. While the personal stories (the author interviews some of his friends back in his D&D days) are, in a way, less interesting, they're also more poignant and come closest to a critique of the injustice of nerd persecution. It's touched upon in several instances, and any more wouldn't really fit within the scope of this book, but the day-to-day suffering of school-age nerds is a serious problem in contemporary American society.

Good flow, easy and relatively quick to read. Didn't blow my mind, but it was good enough and short enough that it didn't need to do so.

The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service,
vols. 1-3

by Eiji Otsuka

O - M - G !!!! This is, like, the best manga ever — and it doesn't even have any gay sex in it. (At one point there is, however, a very muscular, very well-hung re-animated corpse of a convicted and executed murderer.)

The series has a great cast of characters — a sexy/nerdy hacker; a Buddhist psychic who hears the voices of the dead; a doll-faced embalmer; a channeler who communicates with an alien via a sock puppet; and a "dowser" who can locate corpses instead of water — who are featured in stories of varying lengths that center around justice for the dead, which could be anything from solving a crime to simply moving the body to an appropriate place. It's sort of a cross between CSI and Buffy.

Another awesome thing is that this series, published by Oregon's own Dark Horse, comes with a guide to the "sound FX and notes", which provides panel-by-panel translations as well as an explanation of the history and (for lack of a better word) theory behind them as it relates to the history of the Japanese language and writing system(s).*

All in all, highly recommended for manga-lovers and the manga-curious, including teens. Exciting, well-told stories, visually entertaining; some nudity, but no sex (so far).

*The explanation pretty much blows out of the water (as predicted) my surmises in a previous post.

Warchild

by Karin Lowachee

There are some obvious parallels to Ender's Game, but this is a more mature novel. (My library has it cataloged as young adult, but I just checked two others that both have it as adult.) By the end, the protagonist is still a teenager but nearly post-adolescent; the violence is more gory and visceral; and there's some sexual innuendo — and pretty unsavory innuendo at that (child molestation, prostitution, human trafficking). There's also a much clearer and further psychological journey for the character. (It's been a while, but I remember Ender's Game as being more of a psychological journey for the reader than for the character; at the end of the book, Ender just seemed sort of flabbergasted, or like he had PTSD.)

I don't want to do a plot summary, because that'll make it seem more derivative than it actually is. I mean, on some level it is, but then (almost) all really good sci-fi books share certain story elements and plotting techniques. And this book is really good, potentially classic. (Also, the guy on the cover is hot, and I enjoyed having him in mind while reading the book. Too often the cover illustration ruins one's imagination of the character.)