Happy

by Alex Lemon

An outgoing athlete popular with the ladies, Alex Lemon could have had four idyllic years at college. Instead, he had a stroke, and then another, and another; some of the depression and hard times that followed were direct effects of this brain injury, but his disappointment and difficulties led him into drug and alcohol abuse, alienation from friends, and other antisocial behavior. Eventually he had surgery and recovered with the help of a nurturing mother. He's won some poetry awards.

I don't remember the recovery and redemption part very much. Reviews and/or the publisher's description refer to the book's "honesty," "unexpected humor and sensuality," and "Technicolor sentences." I remember it being bleak, morally un-enlightening, and not particularly inspiring.

Anyway, it's short. Could be a good recommendation for someone into memoirs of illness, or that sort of young-adult-off-the-rails memoir.



 

The Fly Trap

by Fredrik Sjöberg

A lovely wee book that's as much a pleasure to hold (and behold) as it is to read. A rambling memoir/meditation of sorts by a Swedish entomologist, the narrative meanders through myriad subjects, always looping back to insects and those who collect and study them, in particular René Malaise, who sounds made up but isn't. If it's a trap, it's a luxurious trap, a honeytrap.

Describing a book like this one is always a challenge. It's about something, but it's also about everything and nothing in particular, about the journey as much as the destination. Certain writers can start on a subject and artfully pick apart or weave together such disparate threads, with the reader barely noticing. Alain de Botton, author of The Architecture of Happiness (among others), is one such writer. Somewhat stylistically similar books that I've reviewed might be The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea and About a Mountain.

More Happy Than Not

by Adam Silvera

Time was, I couldn't get enough young adult fiction. As a kid, I skipped from Encyclopedia Brown right to Stephen King, so maybe I was making up for lost time. (Okay, I did sneak-read my sister's Sweet Valley High books.) But what happened? Too much dystopia, too many vampires, too many covers with pictures of white girls. Also, I got burned by a few gay teen novels that weren't very good. I'm much more selective now in my forays into YA.

This book is part of a genre that I suppose could be called "new dystopia" or "dystopia lite," in which the world, instead of being radically changed or post-apocalyptic, seems more or less the same as now — except for that one thing. (A convenient, efficient, and probably sometimes lazy way to explore a particular aspect of society and the human condition.) The reviews were good, and it has a gay theme, and points for diversity. I figured I'd give it a try.

Reviews mentioned the twist ending, which kind of ruined it for me, since it wasn't that hard to guess. Maybe it would have been more effectively twisty if I hadn't been expecting it. Overall, I give it a "meh," but I can see why it got positive reviews, and I do think teens would like it. The urban and low-income setting is convincingly rendered, and the main characters are mostly believable. Struggling to come to terms with one's sexual identity is rich territory for teen fiction. The story is somewhat sad and not completely resolved at the end.


 

Bitter Eden

by Tatamkhulu Afrika

I fully admit that I was mainly attracted to the cover...



...of the 2014 edition, which continues around the spine; I doubt I would have glanced twice at the 2009 edition...



...which isn't bad, but certainly less striking and not as obviously erotic.

And erotic this novel is, in its way, though it's more "gay vague" than actually gay. The story, which takes place in a series of WWII POW camps, has some minor openly gay characters — mostly objects of derision and disgust, occasionally grudging and reluctant respect — but the two main characters are at best situationally homophilic. In the end, however, the characters' actions raise some questions as to whether it could have been more in different circumstances, or if the intensity of the original circumstances created some lingering confusion and misplaced yearning.

All in all, it's a pretty solid book and an interesting look at the psychology of an all-male POW camp. The language is occasionally a bit old-fashioned, but don't worry about the slang (WWII, UK, South African), you can mostly skip over it or deduce its meaning. I don't know if this book is meant to be semi-autobiographical, but the author did spend time as a POW, and he had an interesting life besides.

Stuff: compulsive hoarding and the meaning of things

by Randy O. Frost

I've seen the Hoarders television show a few times. I think there might even be more than one TV series about hoarders. Even though gawking is the main point of such shows, they do convey a sense of the tragic nature of hoarding disorders. Where they fail is the therapeutic process, which they do very badly and also try to rush dramatically to create a narrative for the show.

This book is good for someone with a genuine curiosity about hoarding, but it's not for someone (such as a hoarder, or a relative or friend of a hoarder) with something at stake in the disorder. Its approach is more journalistic than scientific, and it discusses potential treatments in a general sense without purporting to provide any. So, yeah, if you read this you'll be gawking a little too, but in a much more dignified and respectful way.

Words of Devotion 1 & 2

by Keiko Konno

Meh. I usually like the "mature 18+" yaoi from this publisher, but this set was so-so. Full disclosure: I bagged and didn't actually read the second volume. The art wasn't great, pretty standard but with weird mouths. The story had potential but didn't seem to go anywhere, and the sex parts were rather tame. The first book also had a few side stories, unrelated to the main story, which I tend not to like unless they're really good.



 

The Story of Buildings: from the pyramids to the Sydney Opera House and beyond

by Patrick Dillon, with illustrations by Stephen Biesty

Being a children's book, this sampling of interesting buildings is brief and far from comprehensive. It is, however, an insightful and thoughtfully detailed look at not just the engineering aspects of architecture but also the social needs and aspirations represented in the structures we build.

The illustrations by Biesty are, of course, delightful. Some are large enough to require fold-out pages.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Good for kids grade 4 and up, as well as adults, with an interest in architecture.

Cows

by Matthew Stokoe

Not sure how I came across this book. Perhaps it was one of those times I was combing through the items on the library's website that were recently reviewed by other patrons. Somehow the descriptions of brutality and grossness and murder and talking cows caught my fancy instead of repulsing me.

I'd meant to copy the blurb off the back cover, which sums up this book so succinctly and better than I could, but I forgot to do so. The story is about a young man who has long suffered under the watchful eye of his horrible mother. He wants a life like the ones he sees on TV but doesn't know how to achieve it. He gets a job at a slaughterhouse (with a strangely lackadaisical attendance policy) and discovers a road to self-actualization through murder — and also talking cows, and bestiality.

The book is mercifully short. Not that it's poorly written, it's just really intense and rather disgusting. It isn't gratuitously or jokingly disgusting, however, like The Baby Jesus Butt Plug. This book is more along the lines of Chuck Palahniuk, perversity and depravity in the service of something literary.

The Yacoubian Building

by Alaa Al Aswany

I think I probably read about this book in the New York Times Book Review. I didn't read it immediately, but the review intrigued me enough that I did get around to reading it a couple years later.

Using the voices and stories of a variety of fictional residents in a real apartment building in downtown Cairo, the novel explores facets of Egyptian society that were/are considered taboo, such as homosexuality, and the open secrets of corruption and hypocrisy. It's initial publication caused a bit of a stir in the religious and relatively conservative country.

Though the book came out more than a decade ago, and the Arab Spring was five years ago, I imagine The Yacoubian Building still serves as a pretty accurate picture of contemporary urban Egyptian life. For that matter, though it's Egyptian in its details, it's also a pretty good picture of human nature, the (often hidden) complexities of modern life, and the diversity that lurks within seemingly homogeneous cultures.

Writing this review all these years later has solved a riddle of sorts for me. A while back, I was given a reader advisory practice question to suggest a book for someone who enjoyed Let the Great World Spin. One obvious approach, I figured, was to look for books that also have a variety of first-person viewpoints.  I couldn't come up with anything in the moment, and it's nagged at me for years. If I could have remembered The Yacoubian Building, it would have made an excellent answer to the challenge.

The Bell Jar

by Sylvia Plath

I feel a little weird saying so about this modern classic tale of mental illness and attempted suicide, but I found it to be a quick and breezy read. Sylvia Plath's only published novel is of a modest length, but the subject matter (based somewhat on her own experience, which is why she never meant for the book to be published in the United States) is intense and convincingly depicted. The easy readability must come from the protagonist's casual, conversational, relatable voice, which is also a factor contributing to the book's verisimilitude.

If I owned more books, instead of just borrowing them from the library, I'd put The Bell Jar on the shelf next to The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal. Both are about young people struggling to understand their place in the world and to reconcile their own feelings and aspirations with society's expectations. Despite being written in 1946 and 1963, respectively, neither is dated (except in some details) and both speak to the angst and alienation felt at one time or another by most young adults.

Misbehaving: the making of behavioral economics

by Richard Thaler

I consider myself a pretty intelligent guy, but understanding economics has long been a struggle for me. A major sticking point is theory versus reality, which, in a nutshell, is where behavioral economics comes in. When people appear not to be acting as the perfectly rational agents (surprise) presumed by classical economic theories — for example, when they don't save for retirement even though they know they should, or make a rash gamble on a gameshow instead of going for the sure money — behavioral economics tries to find out why they don't. (And, as explained more thoroughly in the author's other book, Nudge, its insights can be used to craft government policies and business practices that make it easier and more likely that people will do the right thing.) People aren't always rational, so emotion needs to be taken into account, and people aren't all awesome at math (particularly statistics), so our false intuitions and misleading biases affect our behavior too.

Very unexpectedly, I laughed aloud while reading this book. I guffawed over the theory, devised by a Nobel Prize-winning economist, that young people will (naturally, instinctively, rationally) calculate their lifetime wealth and earnings and make judgements about how much to spend, and when to spend or save, so that they won't run out of money and might even be able to make bequests!

This book doesn't have any practical advice per se, but you could garner some strategies for recognizing and maybe correcting your own financial and economic misbehaviors. It's also not a deep study or even a catalog of the findings of behavioral economists. The author spends a fair amount of time talking about the people who are the scientists and economists, and about his own personal journey and career, which I suppose is meant to increase the appeal to the lay reader. For some readers it will; for me, I kinda wish I'd read a long (but much shorter than this book) article in a magazine such as Harper's or Atlantic Monthly.

Plastic: a toxic love story

by Susan Freinkel

Well, you can imagine how depressing a book like this can be. We're killing ourselves and the planet with our addiction to cheap plastic throw-away things, it might be too late to do much about it (even if we wanted to do so), and all we got was this demonic-looking deformed plastic Easter bunny from China.

But this book is also full of fascinating scientific and historical details and anecdotes, and it actually strikes a much more hopeful note than I've implied. (The pessimist is I, not the author.) Plus, plastic can't be all bad. Many modern marvels, such as life-saving medical devices, would not be possible without it. The writing quality is adequate to the task.

Men Undressed: women writers and the male sexual experience

edited by Stacy Bierlein, et al.

The premise of this book, women writing male characters in sexual situations, intrigued me. Doesn't take much effort to think of any number of counter-examples, male authors portraying female sexuality; nor does it take much imagination to guess at the ways male authors might project male sexual fantasies onto female characters and fail to present authentic female experiences of sex and desire. So, turnabout is fair play.

It's a collection of short stories and excerpts from longer works, so you get a couple gems, a few turds, and most in the middle. As a collection, I don't think it captured the best and most successful efforts by women writing male sexuality, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to someone with a casual curiosity. As a man, I found some of the characters' emotions or actions unconvincing, perhaps wishful thinking on the part of the authors — as I'm sure many women react to some instances of men writing female characters. If you want to take a more academic or critical look, however, a range of styles, scenarios, techniques and degrees of quality can be viewed as an asset for a book of this sort.

I wish I had a better memory of which stories I really liked... Best as I can recall, some of the good ones (IMHO) were "Mating in Captivity" by Nava Renek and "The Gift" by Kim Addonizio, but you'll have to judge for yourself.

Why I Killed Peter

by Olivier Ka and Alfred

This graphic novel about surviving childhood sexual abuse and confronting one's abuser was a bit of a disappointment. The storytelling and artwork are good, but the story itself somehow felt a bit hollow or something.

Supposedly the process of creating this work was part of the author's effort to purge a lot of negative emotion and come clean, so to speak. I couldn't help wondering, though, if he didn't hold back the whole truth of what happened to him. The experience he describes is very wrong and shouldn't have happened, of course, but it comes across as more creepy and uncomfortable than as something violently or violatingly sexual that would haunt someone as an adult. But I don't know what it's like, and I try not to begrudge anyone their emotional reactions to the things they experience. I just felt that, if he did hold something back, the omission or incomplete confession would undermine the stated mission of putting it all out there and letting it go.

Also, his attempt to confront his abuser as an adult was anticlimactic, apparently even for him.

Also, no one gets killed.

Big Machine

by Victor D. LaValle

I like when novels are about Big Ideas, but not if the story isn't up to snuff. I remember having mixed feelings about this story's paranormal and redemptive themes. Trying to remember it now puts me in mind of the television show American Horror Story, which is visually cool, has complicated characters, and richly detailed plot lines — but what for? What's my payoff for watching/reading?

I just looked up a summary (probably from the publisher, maybe the book jacket) that calls Big Machine "a fiendishly imaginative comic novel about doubt, faith, and the monsters we carry within us." I do not recall it being funny, but the rest rings true. The protagonist is a former addict and hustler questing for a raison d'être (not the meaning of life, just a meaning for his life).

I expected this book to be more like something by Colson Whitehead (I've read The Intutionist, and I've always meant to read Apex Hides the Hurt), and I got a whiff of Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man, but it just wasn't as good. Or I didn't like it as much. Definitely headed in the right direction, but didn't quite take me there.

[Sidebar: Is it a micro-aggression if I only compare him to other Black authors? (Is that capital B another micro-aggression?) Although not entirely successful, in my estimation, this author is aiming to be in the company of Milan Kundera, Salman Rushdie, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and other literary luminaries.]

The Martian

by Andy Weir

Loved-loved-LOVED this book! A gripping and exciting story combined with a tough, smart character who has humor and heart. I stayed up late and got anxious about the fate of our hero while reading this book about a guy marooned on Mars.

I've heard that some people found the science details to be boring or too difficult, but I felt they added a lot to the story and my sense of how difficult it was for the character to survive alone in a truly harsh and unforgiving environment. And if you don't like those parts, you can easily skim over them; it's not as if you need to check his math to understand the story.

I don't want to say much about the movie, but I'm really glad I read the book first. Not surprisingly, many things had to be left out of the film, and it did have some Hollywood schmaltz that wasn't in the book.

All in all, definite seal of approval for this smart, entertaining, enthralling book. Other than some cuss words, it is youth-friendly. I could see adolescent and teen boys really digging it.

Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness

by Jennifer Tseng

I probably only saw one review of this book, so I can't say for sure it's overrated, but it's definitely not a modern-day Lolita (another overrated book, IMHO). Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness does have some brilliant moments, but it's inconsistent and, at times, annoying. I did finish it, though, so ... B-minus?

The story is about a 41-year-old librarian in a cold, loveless marriage who has an affair with a 17-year-old library patron, whom she only ever calls "the young man." (At the end of the book, a big deal is made of her not saying his name.) She simultaneously befriends, or is befriended by, the young man's mother.

Personally, I found the coldness and loveless-ness of her marriage unconvincing, as it was only briefly explored; I guess the reader is just supposed to take her word for it, which seems problematic when we know the narrator will soon be on shaky moral ground.

Another weakness is the abundance of imagery used to describe Mayumi's emotional states and view of the world. I expected a more constant motif from a poet turned novelist. The switching between naturalistic and man-made imagery initially had me intrigued, hoping something interesting would develop from the juxtaposition, but it didn't pan out. The rather obvious ocean/island theme (she lives on an island, she feels adrift, she is and island) takes over.

Two-thirds through the book, an interesting twist occurs, forcing the reader and protagonist to re-evaluate her transgression. In a way it's just a minor detail, but the revelation surprised me enough that I exclaimed to an empty room. Ultimately, though, the effect on the character's sense of guilt is less than I expected. And another twist follows shortly, bringing things to a head and also cutting things off abruptly. Better to end an affair with a bang then a whimper, I guess.

The Bone Clocks

by David Mitchell

A classic tale of good vs. evil, with Mitchell's trademarks of plot complexity and interwoven multiple narratives, reprising themes of immortal souls and reincarnation from Cloud Atlas. The thrilling plot is at times excruciatingly, exquisitely drawn out and had me reading late into the night.

Unlike the more suggestive Cloud Atlas, in this book the reincarnation (and discarnation, if that's a thing) is explicit, so the story is less realistic — not that Cloud Atlas was all that realistic, but perhaps its imagined futures and pasts were more superficially plausible. Mysticism might be a good description for what's happening here, but nothing typically religious or New Age-y, though one important character/plot point does have ties to organized religion.

At times I almost wished I were reading an e-book so it would have been easier to re-trace the references from later in the book to things I remembered from earlier chapters. A lot of hints are dropped, and the author keeps quite a few balls in the air, so it could be a challenging read, but it's also very satisfying.

I don't recall if I'd realized it at the time, but just now reading a review of another of Mitchell's books, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet, I realized that it and The Bone Clocks both have the same character named Marinus. I'm sure there must have been sly links to Cloud Atlas as well, and I'd like to think I would have detected them, but imperfect memory is one of the pitfalls of not writing reviews right away.

A Cure for Suicide

by Jesse Ball

An imaginative story, rather sad and melancholy, but also beautifully written. Like one of my favorites from 2013 (Sea of Hooks), it's a novel by a poet. Seriously, I almost cried, and some passages I had to re-read and savor several times.

When I first read a little review and synopsis, it sounded too far out there, but on second look I decided to give it a try. As an object, this book is strangely attractive: a simple cover of lovely blue with thin white lettering and a subtle leaf design, and it's not quite as wide as a standard hardcover book. (At least, I remember it being slim; I'm doubting my memory...)

The story seems to take place in a vaguely dystopian or maybe post-apocalyptic future, mainly because the first part unfolds in an isolated Village, part of a strictly ordered environment used to rehabilitate people from an unknown ailment that renders them in some ways childlike but with skills and understanding that are slowly recovered from a previous life.

As the reader starts to piece together what's happening through several iterations of Village life, the perspective shifts to another story, one that came before and explains how one character entered the Process of Villages. This part is a tale of heartbreak and immense sadness, and it recasts the earlier part in an even more tragic light. Finally, a coda of sorts returns to the Process of Villages and a series of fateful choices.

Definitely in my Top 10 of 2015.

The Imperial Cruise: a secret history of empire and war

by James Bradley

Great for history buffs, and I was really into it when I read it (about five years ago), but looking back the subject seems dry and unappealing: the United States government's shady dealings in the Pacific that helped set the stage for WWII — sigh. Have we ever not been a dick to the rest of the world? Teddy Roosevelt and his "big stick"; future president Taft, who was Secretary of War at the time, floating around the Pacific in a vessel that must have been much larger than the one in which he legendarily got stuck.

So, yeah, if you love history, this well-researched book gathers a lot of details that you'd miss in a basic history textbook or in an interwar or WWII history of broader scope. Must be decently engaging writing, because I don't remember it as a slog.

Cooking with Fernet Branca
     and
Amazing Disgrace
     and
Rancid Pansies

by James Hamilton-Paterson

I stumbled across Amazing Disgrace and read it first, not realizing it was in a series. I was initially intrigued because it's published by Europa Editions, and I've enjoyed a number of their other books. (Old Filth, for example, and they published The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which I haven't read but which was a big hit back when.) Their books have a distinctive look, which is how I noticed it.

Cooking with Fernet Branca came out first, in 2005, and Rancid Pansies came out in 2008. Assuming I read Amazing Disgrace close to when it was published in 2006, I took nearly a decade to read all three. No matter! The character at the center of all three books, Gerald Samper, is so memorable and so particular that one can jump right back into his world after a few years absence and not miss a beat. He's absolutely the sort of person I'd like to have for a friend.

He's a middle-aged British queen living in self-imposed exile in Tuscany. He's pompous and scathingly humorous toward others, but a jolly sort whose insults are (mostly) all in good fun. He's aware (but pretends not to be aware) of how ridiculous he himself is, while simultaneously being utterly certain of how exceptional he is. He's sarcastic and brilliant; he's me.

A Little Life
     and
The People in the Trees

by Hanya Yanagihara

I absolutely loved A Little Life. The story is really intense and sad, but the characters are so well-written. It's on the long side, but I read it pretty quickly; I really cared about the characters and wanted to know what would happen. A lot of bad things happen to good people in this book, so overall it's rather bleak. You will feel as if you've been gut-punched more than once.

One review I saw talked about the author straining credulity with how much trauma can be endured by one person, how long that person can cling to his suffering without breaking, and how many people around him can remain so open and caring for so long in the face of his refusal to heal. All true, but the author pushes everyone — characters and readers alike — to a point at which horrible seems somehow normal, which is an interesting feat to attempt.

I've described A Little Life as veering into Oprah's book club levels of tragedy, and at times I felt as if the author were piling on the traumas as a cheap or lazy way of firing the reader's emotions. Normally that would turn me off, but it's one of my top reads so far in 2015. It's also short-listed for a bunch of different awards, so I'm not the only one.

On the other hand... The People in the Trees came out in 2013, to some acclaim. I remember reading the jacket copy and not being into it. I reconsidered in light of how much I loved A Little Life, to my chagrin. No likable characters are in this book: the narrator of the wrap-around story (a foreword and afterword to the "memoir" that constitutes the bulk of the book) is underdeveloped and, frankly, baffling. The rest of the story is tightly focused on a monster of a character who's not even appealing in the way a dark anti-hero could be. The only thing that kept me reading was the slim hope that he might not be so despicable after all. No such luck.

I had wondered, with a bit of unease, while reading A Little Life what made the author come up with such twisted tortures for its main character. After reading The People in the Trees, I seriously asked myself what the hell is wrong with this lady? Little bit of a spoiler: don't read either of these if child sexual abuse is a "trigger" for you.

Captive Prince
    and
Prince's Gambit

by C.S. Pacat

I heard about these books from a friend who likes to read "gay relationship porn for mommies" — at least, that's the description I remember. They're stories of erotic tension, stressing the slow-burn and clashing of wills and building of tension, maybe with dominance/submission under- or overtones. She reads a lot of this sub-genre that's published online.

I never got around to reading this series she recommended until I saw the actual books come in at my library. I'm not too keen on e-books, and I always have some physical book(s) coming due and dictating what I read next, so I probably never would have read them online. Even having gotten my hands on the actual books, I didn't read them until they'd reached the maximum number of renewals.

But, oh, I'm sooo glad I finally read them — and I'm anxious for the third book to come out in early(?) 2016. I'd steeled myself for some bad writing that I was prepared to ignore if I felt like the story would be hot enough for my taste, but I was pleasantly surprised by decent writing and a solid story. I sailed through both books and got to some very rewarding sexy bits toward the end of the second. The main characters, both princes, are well-developed and are building an interestingly complicated relationship, calling into question the futures of both their kingdoms. What will happen in the third book?! It's simultaneously ridiculous and thrilling.

The Dinner

by Herman Koch

An enjoyable* and quick read about two couples having dinner and deciding what to do about an unfortunate situation involving their two sons.

*I hesitate to use the word "enjoyable" because this book has layers of creepiness that peel away to reveal worsening layers of sociopathy. The narrator initially presents himself as a good guy with an insufferable older brother. Soon you begin to realize he may be an unreliable narrator... and the dread keeps building until you realize he's not even the only monster in this story.

So maybe "compelling" is a better word. The writing is good enough to stimulate the suspense and feeling of sick fascination that propels the reader to the end, despite the realization that perhaps none of the characters are redeemable. But what wouldn't you do to protect those you love most?

The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Everyone Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong

by David Orr

I'm not a huge fan of poetry, but every now and then I come across a poem that astonishes me. Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" astonished the eighth-grade version of me, but it turns out I fell for the popular and mostly incorrect interpretation of the poem.

Frost was a tricky guy, but his folksy farmer-poet image is still how most people see him. His most famous poem has a similar image problem. "The Road Not Taken" is not (or, is not only, is far from only) about taking the "road less travelled" because you're a maverick and a rugged individualist (special, American). A close and thoughtful reading reveals that the poem is more about the fraught moments of decision and the stories (and lies) we later tell ourselves about what those decisions meant and how they affected the course of our lives.

The title of the poem points to the road not taken, whereas the popular idea of the poem focuses on the road that is taken by the speaker, which is understood to be the road for special people, the one not taken by everyone else. Meanwhile, the speaker of the poem very clearly judges the two paths to be about the same, something the common misconception of the poem completely ignores. And that's just for starters.

Anyway, a definite thumbs up for this fascinating book about a poem that's much more complex, interesting and ambivalent than most people realize. Not very long, easy to get into. I found the last two sections less interesting than the earlier parts of the book.

NightS

by Kou Yoneda

Yaoi-ish manga collection, with one high school story, one about organized crime, and the best one of all: a series about an auto mechanic and a car salesman falling in love, even though neither has been attracted to men before. A little choppy in places, but the high school story is sweet, and the mechanic-salesman story is really sweet.

 Not at all as explicit as the warning on the cover would have you believe. There is out-and-out sex that happens, but it's drawn very discreetly compared to a lot of other yaoi labelled as "explicit."

My Queer War

by James Lord

Picked this up on a recommendation, so I wanted to like it. The story, being gay during WWII in the military, is very intriguing, but the writing was not to my taste. Florid, rococo even, like a dowager queer in a kaftan surrounded by chintz and chinoiserie. The killer? "Adjacent side street" -- c'mon, man! Of course it's adjacent if it's a side street. A superficial reason for not finishing the book, but life's too short to read books one is not enjoying.

The Mezzanine

by Nicholson Baker

Thank you to whomever recommended I read The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker: intricately crafted, delicately structured, infinite yet contained, constrained, discrete — the novelistic equivalent of a ship in a bottle.

I've enjoyed a number of the author's other books, but if you've read some you'll also know that liking one of his is no guarantee of liking others. 

The Boy Detective Fails

by Joe Meno

A difficult book to like. While part of me wants to understand and empathize, I can't at the moment recall any fictional portrayals of the experience of mental illness that have really clicked with me, and remembering this books makes me wonder if any ever could. I really didn't care for it all, and I'm surprised that I actually finished it.

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell

by Tucker Max

Terribly crass, but I liked it. Probably a weakness of character on my part, but sometimes I can be charmed by a smarmy frat boy who at least has some storytelling talent and some funny hijinx to relate. I don't know or care how much of it is true, and I don't care that I don't care. Imagine if David Sedaris were a bro. I chalk it up to bullshitting, as in talking without any real regard for truthfulness. I just put in a hold request for the sequel (he's got three books now), and I'm probably going to watch the movie of this one someday. Hell, I've even written my own zine collection of drinking stories called Blackout: The Search for Rock Bottom. Sue me... and screw you.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

by David Mitchell

Another amazing book by one of my favorite authors. Quite different from his two(?) other books I've read, but still soooo good. It's historical fiction set in the time when the West was just barely interacting with Japan, and that only commercially under very controlled conditions. Throw in a forbidden romance and some Japanese almost-mythology, and the result is a deeply fascinating and dramatic story with wonderfully complex characters.

Highly recommended.

The Smart Swarm: how understanding flocks, schools, and colonies can make us better at communicating, decision making, and getting things done

by Peter Miller

While this book is briskly readable and thoroughly interesting, it suffers from the disease of hyperbole that afflicts many of the lengthily titled books referenced in its text. Books such as How Everything's Connected Because of YouTube and Why That's Going to Save Humanity Maybe Not as We Know It but Probably Better Because Ashton Kutcher Is Awesome Even if He Did Quit Tweeting, which I've made up, but you probably know what kind of book I'm lampooning.

The trap is that of the Enlightenment. We're figuring out all these new things, and it's looking as if we'll be able to solve every problem ever if we just apply this or that new paradigm in the right way. But no matter how much you fix stuff, people will find a way to fuck it up anyway — amiright?

All in all, though, it's nowhere near as bad as the connection-is-everything wisdom-of-the-crowd internet boosterism to which it irritatingly and persistently gives shout outs. The actual science bits, about analyzing swarm and colony behaviors, how they *sometimes* apply to human situations, are quite nice. The caveat, however, is delayed too long. Following the final chapter on the downside of swarms (for example, when they become mobs and crush people to death), the conclusion is very pragmatic and does a good job of couching the amazing discoveries in some much needed realism, but why is that only at the end?

It's not all at the end; there are a few earlier hints that termites are not our multitudinous messiahs. My favorite hint is when he talks about the movie Minority Report (a book first, of course, which he fails to mention) and points out how those future cops make very effective use of swarm-y robots to find Tom Cruise but the knowledge they needed to make the "spyders" clearly hasn't led to the elimination of poverty or a generally positive transformation of society.

But it's a good book. Self-organizing, collective, decentralized behavior in animals is truly fascinating and fertile ground, and this is an excellent introduction for those with low to medium science prowess. I recommend this book. It just has a few things that are particularly irritating to me. But they can be overlooked. In a way, I'm glad for its shortcomings, as I've found my new peeve word (a phrase, technically): not unlike.

Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark

by Mary Wollstonecraft

I read about this in a zine, Hyena in Petticoats, about M.W. and the zine author's obsession with her. I suppose it helps that I used A Vindication of the Rights of Woman as a major source for a college paper ("Teaching Madness," about the fate of well-educated young women in a society unprepared to accept them). Anyway, Wollstonecraft was a feminist pioneer, a real piece of work, and totally ahead of her time (and yet, being only human, she went a bit bonkers over a married man).

We think of Scandinavia as so civilized these days — maybe even more civilized, in some ways, than the rest of Europe and North America — so it's interesting to read an old-timey English woman's thoughts on traveling in what was then the wild, barbarian north. It's also quite interesting to consider how a generally progressive intellectual can still be so totally backwards in some ways. Makes one wonder what the future will find lacking in today's liberalism.

Zombie Spaceship Wasteland

by Patton Oswalt

For a guy who usually plays the minor character that's the schlubby butt of jokes, this dude is super smart. So smart, at times, that you can almost miss the humor. I'd say he's more of a Sarah Vowell than a David Sedaris: you get the guffaws, but with seriously introspective interludes. One gets the sense that his true calling is to write for shows that are critically acclaimed cult hits but unfortunately get canceled after a few seasons (eg., Arrested Development), rather than stand-up comedy. An enjoyable and easy read that could make you pee your pants, or wax nostalgic, or a bit of both.

Cold: adventures in the world's frozen places

 by Bill Streever

I love this kind of book (literary nonfiction), but this particular one is only a moderately good example of the genre. Nothing in particular is wrong with the author's informative and evocative exploration of coldness, combining thorough knowledge with pleasant story-telling, but it just isn't cream of the crop. I'll give it a solid B-minus.


 

The Strangest Man: the hidden life of Paul Dirac, mystic of the atom

by Graham Farmelo

Somehow I got the idea that this guy, like Alan Turing, a tortured genius of the same era, was gay. I kept waiting through the whole book for the big reveal. He certainly was awkward enough with women. Alas, no dice.

This would be a tricky book to recommend. As a biography, it's well-written and holds the attention, even while being quite long. The author provides good insight into the unspoken and the strange, of which there's plenty in the life of a mathematical savant who surely would be diagnosed on the "autism spectrum" in modern day. You get a good sense of the history and politics of nuclear science around WWII, and the author consistently connects Dirac's early training in engineering and technical drafting to his uniquely visual and instinctual approach to subatomic physics, a realm of almost pure theory and maths. Unless you find all those things interesting, you'll likely have trouble slogging through; if you do, you'll be in hog heaven.


 

Atlas of Remote Islands: fifty islands I have never set foot on and never will

by Judith Schalansky

Holy-moly this book is awesome! I love to geek out over maps, but I'm often frustrated by the clutteredness of a lot of modern atlases, with so many roads especially but also too many small towns and other unimportant things. I probably shouldn't post this on the internet and let someone steal the idea, but I'd love to make an atlas that only shows the interesting stuff, just what's relevant to history or politics, exceptional geographical features, etc. — which is really just a way to introduce the description of this Atlas of Remote Islands as just nearly the exact oppposite of that idea, in some ways, and precisely the same in others, but correspondingly and contrastingly equally awesome in its own way(s). Each map provides a wealth of detail, but not every detail, and the details it does provide are somewhat estoric or anecdotal, and always delightfully interesting. You can tell the author really treasures maps and put a lot of that love into this book. If you dig maps, you need to read this book, and maybe even own it. The book itself as an object is beautifully designed, a true pleasure to hold and to read. It's on a very short list of books I'm actually interested in buying and keeping forever.


 

Zine Post Six

Dixon Ticonderoga, by Stevan Allred
Sort of a paean to pencils, with texts by several authors and some illustrations. The analog realness and old-school-ness of zine and of pencils complement one another in this digital, virtual age.

Moira: a sneak preview, by Chelsea Baker
Very thorough science comic about Down Syndrome, inspired by the author's sister. The illustrations and text work together very well, and I particularly was struck by the sperm "factory" drawing.

Dangerous Aromas, Chapter 1, Beans and Ambition, by the Soft Sciences
Globe-trotting intrigue from the dank jungle to the highest echelons of competitive coffee roasting. Kind of odd, sometimes awkward dialogue, but also some funny bits.

McGriddle Defense, edited by Ryan Gratzer
"Selected short works about the breakfast sandwich" and a must-read for anyone who's succumbed to the temptation of droplets of syrup embedded in fat little pancakes that embrace egg and sausage like delectable parentheses. Includes a choose-your-own-adventure story.

Somnambulist #15, Martha Grover
Grover's long-running series has covered a lot of ground and includes many genres. This edition is a collection of "minutes" from family meetings she attended after moving back home for a while as an adult. Laugh out loud hilarious, but lots of pathos too.

Ride the Lightning, by John Isaacson
Comics interpretation of Metallica lyrics. I'm not a fan of heavy metal (though I do like the long-haired dudes), so it didn't do much for me, and I'm not totally comfortable judging.

Alien Boy: a zine about the life of James Chasse, by Erin Yanke & Icky A.
In one of my other postings of zine reviews I said I was trying to learn when to shut up, so I'm going to say only that this tribute to Chasse comes with a CD.

Beard Month 2010, by Greg Hinkle
Nominated for an award at Stumptown Comics Fest, but it seemed kind of unfocused to me. I had a beard when I read this one, but I'm kind of over beards now.

Colophons, or a note on the type, by Vanessa Gelvin
I can totally dork-out over typefaces (and explain the difference between a typeface and a font), and I've always thought that if I ever get published I'll insist my book include "a note on the type," so I loved this zine a lot.

Trigger No. 1, by Mike Bertino, edited by Dave Nuss
Pleasantly bizarre and trashy comics about bars, teachers that accidently pick up hookers, unicorns, and buttheads. And then a dreamlike one about chronic pain and confronting an abusive past.

A History of Humans Breathing Underwater: an educational zine, by Owen Curtsinger
Very informative, but I wish it were longer. It's small, with drawings and text. The title is quite clear, and you'll get what it promises.

You Are Here, [anthology]
If I'm remembering the right zine, this is a collection of maps and map-related musings by a variety of contributors in a variety of formats: a map of smells and garbage in San Francisco, parallels between Oakland and Paris, different moons in NoLa and Minnesota.

Biophile #2, The scientific method
Biophile #3, Eels, the magic and the mystery
A Pocket Guide to Evolution: a Biophile special, [author unknown]
Teeny but lovely, all three are great examples of science zines. Possible best quote ever in the history of the world: "We can put a man on the moon, but we can't force eels to make babies."

The Malaise Trap, by Jack Bracken and Reid Psaltis
An amazing and beautiful comic about collecting and compulsion, purging and emptiness, and bugs. If it's not a true story, it should be.

She's So Unusual #1, Cyndi Lauper, [author unknown]
A tribute to our favorite she-bopper, this zine includes hair dyeing tips, a recipe for "True Colors" cupcakes, and other Lauper-esque projects. Volume 2 is about Joan Crawford and has instructions for crocheted wire hanger covers.

The Life and Death of the X-Ray Cafe (Oregon History Comics vol. 2), by Sarah Mirk I moved to Portland long enough ago to have seen the X-Ray Cafe, but I never went there. Mirk's series of comics about lesser-known aspects of Oregon history is a great idea and a big win.

Astronomiae Instauratae Grylli, by J. Horn
Sound science and effective story-telling in a mini-comic about a photon traversing the universe and very, very creative integration of words in and around the drawings, although occasionally hard to read as a result.

The Lou Reeder, by Corina Fastwolf
You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory, by Matt Monochrome
Musical memories, drawings, lists, even a crossword puzzle by a dynamic duo of extreme zine fame. (For the record, I did not do the puzzle and do not condone writing in library material; if you want to do the puzzle, make a photocopy or buy your own.)

Brains vol. 1, by Jesse Harrington
Three short stories about punks, skaters, skater-punks and the zombies they battle, and sometimes become. Zombies are the new pirates (as of a couple years ago), so dive in before something else becomes the new zombies.

Hyena in Petticoats: a Mary Wollstonecraft zine, by Alexis Wolf
An engaging biography of author, early feminista and liberated woman Mary Wollstonecraft, and her family, combined with a personal memoir of the zine author's immersion in all things related, including a pilgrimage to London.


 

Married to the Sea

 by Drew

Just stumbled across this little thing, a collection of old-timey illustrations with captions added to make them funny to a modern-day reader. As you'd expect, some are super-duper funny and others are duds, with most in between. Definitely worth flipping through if you're looking for some chuckles.


 

Yakuza in Love, vol. 1

 by Shiuko Kano

My favorite yaoi author hits it out of the park again! (Okay, well, maybe not the best this author has to offer, but still better than almost any other yaoi author I've read.) You can guess the general drift of the story from the title. Some characters are gay-gay, others are ambiguous, and the relationships haven't quite coalesced by the end of volume 1, but I sure am ready for the next book. (Sex scenes are medium-explicit, btw.)


 

Far Arden

by Kevin Cannon

Checked this out based on a review. It's a small, square, fat graphic novel that almost looks like a board book for babies, but in fact it's a relatively lengthy and sophisticated comics adventure that would probably be PG-13 if it were a movie. The title refers to a mythical (or is it real?) lost island in the Arctic; due to a quirk in the ocean and wind currents, it has a tropical micro-climate, so everyone's hunting for it. Abandoned children, evil geniuses, spies, broken hearts and long-held resentments are just part of the dramatic tension — some people are willing to kill to solve this mystery, and some people will die trying to uncover this secret.


 

Makeshift Metropolis: ideas about cities

 by Witold Rybczynski

I've always thought the best part of Sim City is laying out the streets and water lines, deciding where to put the airport and the city hall. Did you know you can sort of cheat and make the game let you do all the building and landscaping you want without having to pay and without turning on the clock? I could do that for days and days.... I also have a thing for architecture and design in general, so I very much enjoyed this book about city planning. It's amazing how much historical overview and analysis, theory and practice, speculation and suggesting the author crams into a rather short book. Engaging and easy to understand, informative but not pedantic, this book is a real pleasure to read.

The author lives and teaches in Philadelphia, so it was additionally gratifying for me to read the many references to my home city's history, architecture and design (even the bad examples).


 

Someday this Pain Will Be Useful to You

by Peter Cameron

Once upon a time I wrote a short story. It started from an idea that didn't include an ending, and I stalled out after a few weeks of working on it. Seven years later, I had a sudden insight about how to end the story, and I finally wrote the ending. Several people to whom I showed it said I should keep going, that they wanted to know what happens to the character next. I didn't think I could, and I never have — in part because it took me so long to find the ending, but also because the story is about emotional paralysis, so the tension and impetus is lost (and the story ends) when the character finally breaks his paralysis (or so I intended).

Point is, I never understood until now how frustrating it can be to read a book whose protagonist is emotionally paralyzed. I can't recall reading any other gay teen novels in which the character isn't either traumatized by being gay and coming out or so totally okay and confident that other people can't help but accept him. This book's anti(?)-hero is disengaged and distant from everyone, alienated even from himself. Sort of reminds me of me at that age.

Although it was frustrating in many ways, I ultimately liked this book. It's easy to see, however, the reasons it won't appeal to many readers. Being a young adult book, it's pretty short, so there's that at least.

Free for All: oddballs, geeks, and gangstas in the public library

by Don Borchert

Having worked in a public library for 10 years, I entertained but not surprised by the shenanigans related by the author, himself a longtime library employee. I was more amazed by how different to mine were his library's circulation policies. Either way, it's a pleasant romp and a quick read, and you don't need to be a public employee to enjoy it.

Imperial Bedrooms

by Bret Easton Ellis

This author is not for everyone, but he's one of my favorites. I was already a bit obsessed with the movie of Less than Zero when I read the book — which I loved so much I read it twice in one weekend. I've also read American Psycho (NOW alleged misogyny, but, hello, he's a psycho and kills dudes and dogs too), The Rules of Attraction (also a great movie, that totally changed my mind about James Van der Beek), and Lunar Park: all amazing. He's a writer who would be a role model for me if I ever got serious about writing.

This book tells the further misadventures of characters from Less than Zero, and it similarly catalogs the debauchery and neuroses of individuals (a reflection of their morally bankrupt society) and, by refraining from explicit commentary, mounts a sly indictment of our wealth- and image-obsessed culture. I find this author's work much deeper and more litererary than most casual readers would, and I have a bachelor's in English lit (just sayin'). I like how he's built a universe of reusable characters, but the characters aren't really exactly the same when he reuses them, and he also plays with the imaginary barrier between writer and character, writer and reader.

Having said all that, I wouldn't recommend this book to someone who isn't familiar with this author's work. For those who are, it's a must-read.

Mirroring people: the new science of how we connect with others

by Marco Iacoboni

This book is very science-y but not too technical. Also, don't read this if non-lethal neurological animal experimentation will upset you.

It's about the discovery and study of "mirror neurons," which discovery has implications for the study of communication via facial expression; autism spectrum disorders; learning and cognition; physical coordination and proprioception; to name a few. Basically, in addition to the neurons that fire when you actually do something (move your hand, for example) you also have a set of mirror neurons that go off when you think about moving your hand or see someone else moving their hand. In a sense, these neurons allow you to practice mentally various movements. In terms of empathy, they are a step beyond simply imagining another person's feelings because your brain is actually physically pretending to have the same emotions by mentally mimicking the other person's facial expressions and body language.

More to it, of course, but that's kind of the nutshell version. Very interesting and not too long, so no need to be intimidated by the science-ness.

Love Recipe #1

by Kirico Higashizato

I can't remember now if I've read the second one, so I just reserved it. As I recall, this series is cute and funny and a little bit sexy. One character is a new employee at a publishing company who gets stuck managing a male yaoi artist who is notorious for missing deadlines. The dashing and slightly older artist playfully attempts to extort sexual favors in return for finishing his work on time. Let the shenanigans commence!

Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters

by Louis Begley

Another book I didn't read in its entirety. I wanted to know more about the Dreyfus Affair (in which anti-Semitic prejudice led to a Jewish officer in the French military being convicted of treason in a sham trial and wrongfully imprisoned for many years), but I didn't realize the "why it matters" angle was going to relate the historical event to contemporary legal issues in the so-called war on terror. So the parts I read, about the incident itself, are actually more detailed than I needed, and the book lacks the larger historical perspective I wanted.

50 paintings you should know

by Kristina Lowis and Tamsin Pickeral

I grabbed this book because the host of my trivia night knows a lot of art history, so it sometimes comes up in the questions. I didn't read the whole thing, mostly scanned for names (of painters and of paintings) and tried to get a sense of the chronology. I was surprised not to find some paintings I'd expected, but I suppose it's pretty damn difficult paring the list down to 50, and not every famous painting could be included. Plus, some famous art is rather crap, and I imagine the authors included/exclued some less famous works that happen to be better exemplars of a style or movement or whatever. Final verdict: interesting but kind of dull for me.

The Sociopath Next Door: the ruthless versus the rest of us

by Martha Stout

I heard a bit of this book when a friend was playing it in her car. Intrigued, I ultimately decided to read the whole thing, in part because I'm convinced my brother is among the one in 25 people who have no conscience at all. I can't profess to know anything about the author's credentials and/or status in the scientific community, but she says she specializes in helping people recover from traumas and has counseled many people who have been damaged by their relationships with sociopaths. This book is an eye-opener, but I recommend taking it with a grain of salt. Psychiatry is a tricky business, and explaining it to a lay-person is particularly dicey, prone to over-simplification, exaggeration and over-generalization. A pretty quick read, totally worth if if you have mentally ill or just plain mean person in your life — which you almost certainly do if these statistics are accurate.

Sex for America: politically inspired erotica
edited by Stephen Elliott

The title doesn't leave much for me to explain. With lots of authors contributing, one is tempted to say there's something for every reader. Mostly hetero and mostly not super-raunchy, and on the whole I found it kind of boring. The story by Jarhead author Anthony Swofford, though, is exciting and filthy and terrifying — at least, I'm pretty sure it's the story by him.

White Brand

by Youka Nitta

Another yaoi manga author whose work I've previously reviewed. One thumbs up and one thumbs down, as I recall. This one is a collection of shorter stories, none great but none exactly bad either. Just kinda meh. I'd've like it more if the sexy bits were sexier.

How to Become a Scandal: adventures in bad behavior

by Laura Kipnis

In college, I was never sure exactly what communications majors were studying. Then again, as someone who considered getting a graduate degree in semiotics, I'm no stranger to the vague, subjective and useless. Well, maybe not useless, but not practical. Cultural critique and analysis has its uses, but one can easily argue it's a luxury few can afford — a sort of First World problem or white male neurosis, if you will. In other words, right up my alley.

Anyway, I didn't realize until I was starting this book that I've also read another book by Kipnis, Against Love: A Polemic, which I found to be very incisive and thought-provoking, in particular when she questions whose interest is really served by monogamy and the so-called nuclear family. With queers fighting for legal recognition of their families and straights divorcing in droves, one does wonder, or should.

Although not entirely without humor, that book is more serious than this newer one. In drolly reviewing four major meltdowns by public figures (or at least people who became public figures due to their extraordinary flame outs), the author explores related issues plaguing modern American life: media saturation, fame obsession, compulsive confession and a total absence of self-shaming. Funny and quick, I recommend it.

Tough Love Baby

by Shiuko Kano

Shiuko Kano has made some of my most favorite yaoi mangas, including Play Boy Blues, I'm Not Your Steppin' Stone, and Maybe I'm Your Steppin' Stone. (Read my reviews of those here.) This PG-13 book definitely meets the author's high standard of stories with emotional sublety and narrative complexity. I only wish it were longer, because I enjoyed it that much. Highly recommended if you're into the genre.

Skippy Dies

by Paul Murray

The jacket copy says something really pompous about this guy being the literary voice of his generation (he was born in 1975), but I remembered that I read a long time ago his other book, An Evening of Long Goodbyes, which I thoroughly enjoyed but wouldn't credit with much literary value. Which begs the question of how a guy with only two books, one of which is fluff, can be given such an exalted position? Maybe it's tongue in cheek, which would be in keeping with his wry sense of humor.

The book clocks in at 600 pages or so, but it's not as tall as the standard hardcover, and it also reads quickly. Despite it's smooth breeziness, however, the story does entail interesting moral dilemmas and insights about human nature, and manages to be sophisticatedly ambiguous enough to keep the reader thinking and guessing. And it's got some damn funny bits too.

So what's the book about? Teenagers in love and lust, adults in love and lust, drugs good bad and questionable, commitment and infatuation, self-knowledge and the possibility of ever really "growing up", time travel in the multiverse, video games and hallucinations, set in an Irish boarding school with priests. It has two protagonists, I guess, one a student and one a teacher not quite at middle-age. It's kind of sad in the end, with that hollow feeling that comes with the realization that there are no easy answers.

Sex at Dawn: the prehistoric origins of modern sexuality

by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha

This is a very interesting and highly readable book with important things to say. It is not, however, an important book. I was disappointed, even when entertained, by the authors' flippancy. I'm sure the joshing tone was meant to make science more palatable to the masses, and it probably succeeds in that respect, but it has the unfortunate side-effect of providing fodder to their critics — those in the same field, as well as those who mistrust the whole enterprise of evolutionary psychology.

I don't want to get bogged down in that debate, so with as little judgement as I can manage, I'll tell you: this book uses comparative biology, cultural anthropology and other disciplines to speculate about the socio-sexual behavior of primitive (but, evolutionarily speaking, relatively recent) nomadic hunter-gatherer humans, and then shows how the behaviors for which we are evolutionarily suited are at odds with contemporary social and sexual mores and traditions. Chief among their conclusions, perhaps, is that humans are not evolved for monogamy, which might have some bearing on the number of marriages that end in divorce.

I'll leave it at that. If you want to know how and why they came to that conclusion, read the book.

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk

by David Sedaris

Um, it's by David Sedaris. Pretty different from his other stuff actually, but you're going to read it or not based on it being by him, so what's the point in me explaining that these are not stories about Sedaris and his life but Aesopian fables twisted by his characteristic sense of humor? Easily read in one sitting, or perhaps several sittings in a certain room on a certain piece of porcelain "furniture."

The Four Stages of Cruelty

by Keith Hollihan

Reading this book did exactly what I'd hoped: it reminded me of watching the TV series Oz. Could have used some hot gay sex, though. A solid stay-up-late thriller set in a penitentiary, this story follows the intertwined fates of a lonely middle-aged female guard and a 19-year-old guy convicted of accidentally(?) killing his ex-girlfriend. The creepy old prison itself and many of the characters have hidden secrets and simmering tensions. The ending is kind of odd, in that it doesn't fully answer one of the central mysteries, but, to my surprise, I actually liked that it didn't.

I Love You Phillip Morris: a true story of life, love, and prison breaks

by Steve McVicker

I wanted to read this before seeing the movie, and now I think the movie might not be playing anywhere. It's a really breezy read with plenty of funny bits, despite being about a man whose life, all things considered, is pretty tragic. This true story (written up by a journalist, based on interviews and research) is also a refreshingly unusual portrayal of a gay dude: on the one hand, the gayness is actually just incidental to the story; on the other hand, here's a gay guy who commits all sorts of crimes and repeatedly breaks out of prison, all for love.

Back to the movie for a sec, it's also heartening to see the great responses from Ewan McGregor and Jim Carrey when immature idiots like Leno and Letterman ask them if it was "weird" playing gay characters and/or kissing each other. I'm sure you can find clips on the YouTubes.

Super Sad True Love Story

by Gary Shteyngart

I've almost read a book by this author in the past, but never quite got around to it. So when this one came out to rave reviews, I decided I would read it even though I had to be on the waiting list. I pretty much hated it. Being stubborn, though, I forced myself to read the whole damn thing, looking and hoping that something would happen to make the rave reviews make sense. Alas and alack, no such luck. It's near-future semi-dystopia with an anti-hero, so there's obvious commentary on contemporary culture — but so what? All the characters are just kind of gross, either physically or psychically or both, which I guess is a bit of a trend these days. But I don't have to like it. So there.

Fake, vol. 1

by Sanami Matoh

I was very disappointed and will not continue with this not-quite-yaoi series. The two cop characters are Japanese (and maybe a little too old to qualify for yaoi), but I guess they're in New York or something, because a lot of the other characters seem caucasian, and for some reason all the gangsters have Jewish names (which I found a bit offensive). One of the cops is gay, and the other isn't — or he might be, but I was never convinced to care about the outcome. There also are some implausible events (the two of them all of a sudden sleeping in the same bed with an orphaned 14-year-old they sort of look after) and other failures of story-telling. Lastly, the young character is openly homophobic, so poo on him.

I Was Told There'd Be Cake                     
      and
How Did You Get This Number

by Sloane Crosley

I never got around to writing up Cake, and now I've read the author's second book, which is in development to become a show on HBO. She worked in publishing before being published herself, so I'm sure she knew a thing or two to grease the skids, but stuff is pretty good. I'm not saying that her collections of humorous essays wouldn't have been published (or made into television shows) if she weren't an industry insider, just that they're not really the caliber of David Sedaris or Sara Barron. Or me, for that matter; I'm quite sure I could do better, even though I probably never will.

But, hey, if you like the short funny personal essay genre, go for it. You won't be truly dazzled, but you won't regret it.

Some Things That Meant the World to Me

by Joshua Mohr

Really bizarre book that I didn't particularly like, but I did finish it. Not terrible, I just never quite connected with the character. It's pretty "edgy" and fantastical, about the probable mental illness — or at the very least PTSD — of a young man who grew up with a distant mother and abusive step-father and is struggling to live on his own in San Francisco after being released from an institution in Arizona. Maybe you'd like it if you like Chuck Palahniuk, and/or maybe a good suggestion who likes A Child Called "It" and those sort of books.

As a side note, it was weird (oddly pleasing? disconcerting?) reading a book that mentions places in the Mission neighborhood very near where a friend of mine lives, places I've been.

Rampaging Fuckers of Everything on the Crazy Shitting Planet of the Vomit Atmosphere

by Mykle Hansen

Bizarre and gross dystopian short stories with occasional flashes of satirical brilliance but mostly gratuitous and unenlightening. Not much else to say, except that I'd recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed reading anything by Carlton Mellick, such as The Haunted Vagina.

Logicomix: an epic search for truth

by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou
with Alecos Papadatos (art) and Annie Di Donna (color)

Abso-frickin'-lutely amazing! But I'm afraid if I tell you what it's about, you probably will think it sounds really boring...

This graphic novel tells the life story of philosopher and logician Bertrand Russell, who sought a solid logical foundation for mathematics and instead discovered a paradox that demonstrates the impossibility of describing, or even locating, such a bedrock from within the system of math, set theory and formal logic. Amazing, right? I mean, have you ever asked yourself whether "the set of all sets that don't contain themselves" contains itself? Of course it doesn't, because if it did, then it wouldn't, in which case it would, because it couldn't... Perhaps there's a reason so many logicians go insane (or why the insane are attracted to the study of formal logic).

Just like Russell's paradox, this book is self-referential, with segments on how the authors and illustrators worked on constructing the story, discussion of the meaning of the story and of story-telling itself, and even an allegory of sorts relating to the Greek tragedy The Eumenides, the last play in the Oresteia trilogy by Aeschylus.

Sprout

by Dale Peck

I like the first half of this book, when the green-haired small-town gay boy is secretly shtupping the hot corn-fed (half-Latino) jock. But I guess that's been done before, notably in Geography Club by Brent Hartinger.

The second half of the book went all weird and creepy with the introduction of a new character. That's also been done before, but this one sort of goes double creepy in an unappealing and unsettling way. The ending is all over the place: hopeful, hollow, heartbreaking. Made me give the book an overall negative rating.

Another complaint I have is that it fails to make use of the opportunity to deliver a safe-sex message. In fact, the only time condoms are mentioned, two teen characters are mocking adults' use of them. A quarter of a million Americans are HIV-positive and don't know it, and it isn't necessarily safer in the rural Midwest, where the story is set. So get tested, fools, and remember, Safe Sex Is Hot Sex!

Yellow Dirt: an American story of a poisoned land and a people betrayed

by Judy Pasternak

Interesting, yes. Depressing, oh hell yes. Good book, though, and quite readable.

The author, an L.A. Times reporter, in this book expands her original series of articles investigating the still-lingering tragic effects of uranium mining on the Navajo reservation in the southwest United States. So, yeah, Native Americans... no big surprise they've been effed over, and effed over hard by our government, absolutely derelict in its duty (by treaty) to protect the welfare and interests of the Navajo. First, during the Manhattan Project, the government pretty much did the effing themselves, all but stealing ("renting") the mineral rights and then employing Navajo as miners with no protective equipment, and doing nothing to contain the spread of contaminated soil, dust and water. Then, of course (right?), the government skipped town and turned a blind eye for years to the general injustice and pollution in the first place and to the continuing misbehavior of the private companies that began competing for the precious resource with no thought to the people living on top of it (and in some very tragic cases, living in houses made of it).

Worst part? How recently this bullshit was hapenning (into the '80s for sure) and how little has really been done to redress the harm, even though more positive action has been taken in the last decade than in the previous 40 years of Kafka-esque bungling, evasion and disavowal/shirking of responsibility.

The Professor and the Madman: a tale of murder, insanity and the making of the Oxford English Dictionary

by Simon Winchester

Sounds like a really nerdy book, and I have admitted to being somewhat nerdy, but this book is surprisingly exciting. I really tore through it and had trouble putting it down when I needed to. Seriously, not dry or boring at all. The subtitle hints at the sort of intrigue that gives the book a bit of thriller-iness, but it's also quite interesting to read about the who's and how's and the sheer humungousness of the creation of the OED. And I really swear it's not boring! It's like a really good episode of Nova or History Detectives, with a dash of Poirot. Probably among the Top 10 literary nonfiction books I've ever read, I recommend it highly.

The Halfway House

by Guillermo Rosales

A posthumously published novella about mental illness written by a mentally ill Cuban exile who committed suicide in middle-age after destroying most of his unpublished work. I read it in a couple of hours, not bad but not great, I might not have read the whole thing if it had been longer.

I seem to have a love-it-or-leave-it thing with Latin American literature. I really like what I've read by García Márquez and I've enjoyed a few things by Carlos Fuentes. On the nonfiction/memoir side, there's the fantastic Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas (also Cuban), which was so good I bought a copy for a friend. (The movie is quite good, too.) But I've had a couple of duds recently. ¡Qué lástima!

Cold Sleep

by Narise Konohara

Is amnesia ever a solid premise? Maybe for a comedy, but otherwise I kinda think it fails more often than it succeeds.

While not exactly a success, this book is certainly much better than Dear Myself, another amneisa-themed yaoi. Also, it's more of an illustrated novel than a manga. The writing is pretty decent, but the story is not as compelling as Don't Worry Mama, a book by the same author that I absolutely adored. Kind of a lukewarm recommendation, but it is what it is. It's been a while since I read it, but I recall that it didn't have a decisive ending, so maybe it's part of a series; I'd certainly consider reading a sequel.

Secret Historian: the life and times of Samuel Steward, professor, tattoo artist, and sexual renegade 

by Justin Spring

I don't remember how I stumbled across Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos: A Social History of the Tattoo with Gangs, Sailors, and Street-corner Punks, 1950-1965 by Samuel M. Steward, but I do remember the picture on the cover:





Um, how could I not read that?

Anyway, I think I heard the author of this exhaustive biography on Fresh Air and got interested in reading more about the unusual life of the real Professor Sparrow (his nom de needle during his tattooing years). I was pulled in right away and became excited to read about the fun, sexy times of a guy who kept a Stud File (including, in some cases, forensic "samples") with deets on every one of the many hundreds of dudes he hooked up with. Of course, he was also a writer of poetry, novels and erotica; a friend of Thornton Wilder and Gertrude Stein; a collaborator and chum of the infamous Kinsey; an artist; a compulsive collector and record-keeper; and a capable self-analyst.

The book is quite long for a bio of a non-famous person, and does drag just a bit in some places, but it really is quite engaging throughout. Perhaps not very easy to recommend to someone you don't know fairly well, but it is written so as not to be titillating and it is a fascinating glimpse into the largely undocumented demimonde of pre-Stonewall gay life.

The Scorch Trials

by James Dashner

Disappointing!

A few tantalizing hints about WICKED and the real purpose of the trials, but really just more of the same and nothing truly new. It's making me mentally reëvaluate The Maze Runner. Rather like those stupid teenage vampire books I read, the poor quality of the writing becomes all to apparent once you get past the novelty and excitement of the first book. A really good idea for a story is maybe enough to carry a bush-league author through one book, but especially in young adult there are nearly always plans for a trilogy (at least). A rather dreary reflection of the state of the publishing industry? Or am I the wretched one, becuase I'm going to read the third book, however much it pains me?

Through the Language Glass: why the world looks different in other languages

by Guy Deutscher

I call shenanigans! After detailing the Sapir-Whorf debacle and cautioning against unfounded assumptions generally, and after the caveat that there is much we do not know about brain function and physiology, this linguist goes and says:

"[I]t becomes clear that when the brain has to decide whether two colors look the same or not, the circuits responsible for visual perception ask the language circuits for help in making decision, even if no speaking is involved. So for the first time, there is now direct neurophysiologic evidence that areas of the brain that are specifically responsible for name finding are involved with the processing of purely visual color information."

Now, I'm no neurophysiologist, but I know a thing or two. Even overlooking the weak "it becomes clear" excuse for an explanation, I immediately thought of at least one good reason that language areas of the brain would fire while a person is analyzing visual input about colors, and it has nothing at all to do with the visual circuits "asking for help" from the language circuits!

Anyway, now I've got that off my chest.... I really liked the first third of this book, in which the author talks about the mystery of the seeming absence of color descriptions in ancient texts, and runs through the history of color naming and color perception ideas (among others) in linguistic studies. I don't want to go into too much detail about the trail of breadcrumbs he's trying to lay out, but suffice it to say after an intriguing launch he started losing me halfway through, and by the end I was thoroughly disgusted and so ready for the book to be over.

The Ax

by Donald E. Westlake

I've dissed "thrillers" before, and been chagrined after liking one, and I did read quite a bit of Stephen King in high school. This book was decently amusing, if predictable, and the reading was smooth and fast. Still, I'm not sure how much I'd've enjoyed it if I hadn't been sick on the couch and bored of watching TV. Does have some funny bits, maybe like a Carl Hiaasen book (though I've never read him).

Although the book was written a bit over a decade ago, during the workforce "downsizing" of the mid-to-late '90s, it's interesting to read now during our current economic "downturn." The story is about a guy, unemployed for nearly two years after being laid off from a job he had for 30 years. As an older dude with a rather specialized set of skills, his options are quite limited. In a trade journal he finds an article about some other guy who has exactly the job he wants and for which he is qualified, but he knows he's not the only unemployed polymerized paper production manager in the Northeast. So he hatches a plan: he places a fake help-wanted ad, receives a bunch of résumés, then sets out to kill the five guys who are as qualified or more qualified than he, before killing the guy who has the job he wants. But will everything go according to plan?

Feed

by M.T. Anderson

The fourth book I picked up because of the teen dystopian fiction article in the New Yorker, and the least like the others. Set in a future of near-earth space travel and the intertubes — complete, even replete with context-sensitive advertising — piped directly into the brain, related viruses and diseases, plus a hint of disaffected youth and potential resistance, it has all the right ingredients. The ending, however, was rather anti-climactic and left me feeling as if the story, and the experience of reading it, had no point. Which is, in a way, an accurate adolescent feeling, but still disappointing.

Dreams from the Monster Factory: a tale of prison, redemption and one woman's fight to restore justice to all

by Sunny Schwartz with David Boodell

I have a weird and mostly unanalyzed fascination with prison. (Could it be a gay sort-of-fetish thing?) Anyway, this book doesn't have any sexy bits, like the HBO series Oz, but it's a pretty good read. The author worked in jails in San Francisco, bringing in educational opportunities, anger management classes, and other programs to prepare inmates to rejoin society. Sure, criminals are there to be punished not coddled, but since very nearly all of them will eventually be released, and given the very high rates of recidivism and re-incarceration, it makes sense to use the opportunity to help them. If they're just corralled and left to stew in their own juices, fighting with one another and still being criminals inside the jailhouse, they'll emerge even more bitter and screwed up, more violent and maladjusted. The strength and energy of the author's personality and odds-beating positivity make an engaging story of a subject that could easily be a real downer.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth

by Carrie Ryan

This is the third of the books I read because of the New Yorker article about teen dystopian fiction, and it's the first of them to be a disappointment. It's about zombies and also is kind of like M. Night Shermomanon's The Village. All the necessary elements were there, but the story never really gelled and never really sucked me in. There's a sequel or "companion book" out, but I'm not going to read it. Overall rating: meh.