We're having a family emergency at the moment, so I've been away from home and my books while I help out. Yesterday, I put on a chauffeur's cap and took my cousin's daughter to the orthodontist. As I waited in the lobby, I picked up the nearest reading material: I Spy: Ultimate Challenger!

Although I've known about the I Spy series of children's books, this was my first time actually looking at one and I loved it. Loved it! I had no idea how amazing the photography actually is. Hundreds of details melt together to create scenes requiring an eye able to see both the forest and the trees.

Unfortunately, I was slightly disappointed that the appointment didn't last longer since I only made it halfway through the scavenger hunt before we had to leave. Sniffle.

A few posts ago, I briefly wondered why there's such a stigma attached to Oprah books. At the book review panel, an academic in the audience stated that she gets some of her fiction recommendations from "god forbid" Oprah. The qualifier struck me as odd. She was clearly embarrassed by her admission and must have added the "god forbid" as a means of staving off not being taken seriously.

Years ago, when I lived in Chicago, I attended an Oprah taping after she had lost a ton of weight on a liquid diet. She moved around the audience with a microphone back then, and I was awestruck by how large her head and hair were compared to her tiny, tiny body. Seriously, the ratio was something along the lines of a Charms Blow Pop, and I was so preoccupied with wondering how she managed to carry her cranium that I barely remember what the show was about. Soap stars maybe.

Oprah's Book Club doesn't register much on my radar, probably because I don't fall into the demographic. In looking over the master list of selections, I have to admit that I haven't read many of them. As a result, I don't feel qualified to judge her selections as worthy of either praise or scorn. Of the books I have read, though, I enjoyed every one:

• Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
• The Best Way to Play by Bill Cosby
[Note: I used to teach 3rd and 4th grade and have read a lot of children's books.]
• The Treasure Hunt by Bill Cosby
• The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
[Note: BookBlog's September 2002 selection.]
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck
• The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
• Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
[Note: BookBlog's February 2004 selection.]

My favorite above is Middlesex, but I absolutely loved The Virgin Suicides and wish Eugenides would write another book. I hope he doesn't make us wait another 10 years.

Via the comments, Imani of The Books of My Numberless Dreams writes that her ideas about literature are at the opposite end of the spectrum from Oprah's:

"To Winfrey, though, an author's literary style, erudition or linguistic experimentation is of secondary importance: She's primarily concerned with the social aspects of literature, how literature can help our culture. If the work doesn't have a useful moral foundation that has the potential to make the world a more civil and pleasant place, it's not going to be one of her selections." - from the Los Angeles Times via Black Garterbelt

Matt of A Variety of Words adds:

I'll also throw out why for me there is a stigma attached to reading an Oprah book. I feel like she is trying to be our savior, telling us what to think and what is good because we can't possibly decide those things ourself. I can make my own decisions on what is good thank you very much.

Hmm...it seems as though Oprah's desire to better society is off-putting. I can't help making a connection to this month's discussion selection, Happiness, a comedy delineating the ruinous effects of the first self-help book that actually works. From the author's introduction:

This is a book about the end of the world, and as such, it involves diet cookbooks, self-help gurus, sewer-crawling convicts, overworked editors, the economic collapse of the United States of America and the widespread tilling of alfalfa fields. And I think one of the characters loses a finger at some point, too. This is the story of apocalypse: Apocalypse Nice. It tells of a devastating plague of human happiness, an epidemic of warm fuzzy hugs, and a mysterious trailer on the edge of a desert...

So I have to wonder, at what point does making the world a better place go from sincere altruism to mass consumption of tainted Kool-Aid followed by the apocalypse?

Matt at A Variety of Words recently read Jim Crace's Being Dead and posted a brief review to his blog. [Gasp! Note to professional critics who aren't reading this since no one reads blogs: breathe. Matt simply likes books; he isn't trying to put you out of a job.] He didn't like it much, and gave it a rating of 2.5/5.0. After some reflection, he decided to lower it to 2.0 because as he later wrote, "I think I’m allowing myself to be too influenced by others and have sometimes been giving a book a higher rating than I really should have."

Years ago, I read Being Dead because of its positive press and award-winning status. I hated it. Besides beautiful prose and a carefully-plotted story arc, there isn't much else redeeming about the book. Pre-BookBlog, I had a personal website and posted my own brief review. [Gasp! Note to professional critics who aren't reading this since no one reads blogs: breathe. I simply like books; your job security, though, means little to me.] I thought it might take some digging to find and share it with Matt, but it turns out I already posted it to BookBlog.

A few posts ago, I mentioned being interested in reading Alex Mindt's Male of the Species. The book is a collection of short stories about fathers and their children, and it explores several themes of interest to me. I have a sometimes strained relationship with my father, am often befuddled by men, and identify with the immigrant experience. Recently, I also started paying attention to book trailers.

As I watched the video, I zeroed in on the line: "A Vietnamese immigrant—a boat person, an Elvis impersonator—tells the story of how his father helped him escape Vietnam." The accompanying image is of an Asian man, with an anguished expression on his face, running through a field as an American soldier watches from behind. My first reaction was, "Well, isn't that typical." Most Americans can't tell Asians apart by looking at them, whether they be Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, etc. The photo in the video, of a running Asian dude and an American G.I. onlooker, literally screams Vietnam War thanks to Oliver Stone and the media.

Being the child of a Vietnamese immigrant, I can generally pick my ethnic brethren out of a crowd. However, I was raised in the United States and still have trouble distinguishing between the Japanese and Chinese, for example, since my experience with them is limited. My Vietnamese mother, on the other hand, can sort Asians with 100% accuracy because she innately sees subtle differences in eyelid and bone structure. To this curious child, such an ability seemed like a magical power so guessing ethnicity became a kind of a game between us, with her always being right and me usually being wrong. Even today, I often ask her to use her "power" when we see an Asian on television or in a movie. She amazes me every time.

Anyway, after watching the trailer for Male of the Species, I tore through the book looking for the Vietnamese names. "King of America" is told by Tran Nguyen, a Vietnam War refugee cum American immigrant cum Elvis impersonator in Vegas. He loves a Vietnamese woman, a showgirl who is pregnant by another Elvis impersonator, and offers to raise her biracial child as his own. Intertwined with the present day storyline, Tran shares memories of his father's murder by the Viet Cong and his family's subsequent escape to Malaysia on a fishing boat.

"King of America" is loaded with cliches. Tran Nguyen's name, written surname first in the Vietnamese way, is roughly equivalent to "Bob Smith." The Viet Cong murders an American sympathizer. A family escapes on a fishing boat. Rape and starvation run rampant in refugee camps. Although I would love to read about something other than the usual fare, the sad truth is that such events are the shared Vietnam War experience. Furthermore, some details felt inauthentic. For one, I have never heard anyone refer to the language as "Viet." Tran also names each of his relatives, but the Vietnamese actually use numbers. I call my cousins, the children of Auntie Three, Number Two, Number Three, Number Four, etc. Unlike the fictional Chinese detective Charlie Chan, we Vietnamese have no "Number One Son" so the count always starts at two regardless of gender.

Yet, "King of America" packs a lot of punch into a few pages. Its overarching grand themes make up for slips in the tiny details. Tran's desire to do the right thing for the pregnant showgirl complements his own father's nobility in helping others escape the war. The abject racism of his co-Elvis impersonator contrasts against the American G.I. who carried his father to safety amidst flying bullets. Forbidden by the Viet Cong, the King and his music symbolize freedom, dreaming of a life beyond war, and the endless possibilities of the American experience. Alex Mindt has crafted an ambitious short story, and I look forward to reading the book in its entirety.

A couple of days ago, Eddie and I watched the movie version of The Da Vinci Code.

Back when the book was all the rage, I wanted to read it simply because everyone was reading it. However, I refused to buy the hardcover because the publisher was being greedy by holding off on the paperback release. My curiosity increased when I had a brief fling last year with a man who read it despite saying: "I hate to read" and "This is only the second book I've ever finished." (Although I didn't know at the time, these statements foreshadowed the venture's demise.) Eventually, a coworker gave me a gift of the mass market paperback.

And I hated it.

The entire book is made up of puzzles, which, honestly, are pretty easy to solve. For example, here is a condensed version of a riddle scene with dialogue completely made up by me:

Rebel Cryptographer: Mon dieu! What does it mean?

Sir HolyGrail Obsessed: The trickster! We may never know.

Professor of Obscure Symbols: Um, I have a headache.

Rebel Cryptographer: Merde!

Three painful pages later...

Professor of Obscure Symbols: You see, the pentacle was originally a pagan symbol representing the sacred feminine. The Star of David, in contrast, is made up of a combination of the symbol for man, the blade, and the symbol for woman, the chalice. Not only that, but Leonardo Da Vinci was known for hiding symbols in his paintings just to piss off the church. Clearly, this means that we're looking for the resting place of Mary Magdalene.

Sir HolyGrail Obsessed: Mary Magdalene was not a whore!

Rebel Cryptographer: Sacrebleu! But what does this have to do with the clue?

Professor of Obscure Symbols: We need a mirror!

Sorry for ruining it if you're one of the ten people who doesn't already know the story.

When Eddie mentioned that the movie was next in his video queue, I insisted that I be invited over to watch. He wanted to see it because he enjoys Tom Hanks movies. I wanted to see it because of two personal issues that should probably be worked out in therapy:

• When I am unhappy with something, my first thought is usually that the problem is me. This is because my mother's voice is in my head. Back in grammar school, I'd come home and tell her that so-and-so kid picks on me or Sister Mary So-and-so hates me or whatever unjust abuse I suffered that day. Her first response would always be, "Maybe the problem is you." After a while, I gave up complaining because that sentence, in her voice, would pop into my head and silence pleas for empathy. Later, after I became a teacher, it blew my mind when I discovered that some parents will actually go to the school in order to demand justice for their maligned child.
• Because of the above, I am also a masochist. For example, I have never understood why George Eliot is considered a great writer. I have read her entire catalog but just can't see it. Since the problem is me and I'd like to understand the appeal, I frequently reread her books in the hope that I might finally understand. As such, The Mill on the Floss is in a TBR pile around here somewhere. My sister, who is not psychologically damaged in this way, finds my Eliot obsession amusing but has considered an intervention to break the cycle of self-inflicted reading torture.

So. I did not like The Da Vinci Code as a book. However, I really wanted to see the movie because the problem is me and I am a masochist. Eddie kindly extended an invitation.

And I hated it.

Where to begin writing thoughts on The End, the last in A Series of Unfortunate Events? The back cover blurb best sums up the book as Lemony Snicket addresses the reader with:

You are presumably looking at the back of this book, or the end of THE END. The end of THE END is the best place to begin THE END, because if you read THE END from the beginning of the beginning of THE END to the end of the end of THE END, you will arrive at the end of the end of your rope.

At the end of a rope, or a lot of disappointment at least, seems to be the theme of what I've seen in many Amazon customer reviews. Although some of our curiosity is satisfied, like Beatrice's identity, The End raises more new questions than answers old ones. I'm not sure why so many expected a more satisfying conclusion, since we're told point blank that "the world is always in medias res—a Latin phrase which means 'in the midst of things' or 'in the middle of a narrative'—and that it is impossible to solve any mystery." In fact, such an ending has been foreshadowed since the beginning and the entire last book is a lesson in this, so I suspect that the disappointed didn't get it.

The most intuitive review I've seen is this one from Blogcritics, which makes more sense after you've read the book. Snicket doesn't tie up loose ends and makes us think for ourselves, and he practically forces conversation between parents and children. As a reader, I absolutely cannot stand having my intelligence insulted. No deus ex machina is conjured here, and, for me, that marks the distinction between a good book and a great one.

I recently finished reading Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. I wasn?t expecting much because the back cover copy included the word ?quixotic,? but I really enjoyed it. It sucked me in by being funny and held my attention through the ending because it is also tragic. The narrative is made up of three stories: a young Jew?s journey to Ukraine to find the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis, the history of his family going back to his great-great-great-great-great-grandmother, and the coming of age of his Ukrainian translator.

In one funny scene, the main character, who is also named Jonathan Safran Foer, explains that Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior, the translator's grandfather's female dog, is named after a Jew:

?He says that the bitch was named for his favorite singer, who was Sammy Davis, Junior.? ?A Jew,? the hero said. ?What?? ?Sammy Davis, Junior was a Jew.? ?This is not possible,? I said. ?A convert. He found the Jewish God. Funny.? I told this to Grandfather. ?Sammy Davis, Junior was not a Jew!? he hollered. ?He was the Negro of the Rat Pack!? ?The Jew is certain of it.? ?The Music Man? A Jew? This is not a possible thing!? ?This is what he informs me.? ?Dean Martin, Junior!? he hollered to the back seat. ?Get up here! Come on, girl!?

Soon after, we find out that the hero is vegetarian and cannot get a plate of food without any meat on it. The translator comes to his rescue by using the tact of a diplomat to negotiate for an extra potato. But the waitress asserts, ?'We can make concessions to give him two potatoes, but they are served with a piece of meat on the plate. The chef says that this cannot be negotiated. He will have to eat it.'? I actually laughed aloud on the subway when the hard-gotten extra potato fell to the floor with a ?PLOMP.?

After capturing your attention with his wit, Foer moves on to serious issues like the razing of a Jewish village and the translator?s grandfather?s memories of the war. By the time the novel took a somber turn, I was already committed to seeing it through to the end. Anyone else read this book?

"Not much, you?"

Michael Feldman of NPR's Whad'Ya Know interviewed Barbara Ehrenreich, writer of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, last week. I read the book several months ago and was pleasantly surprised to find that she was the guest speaker when I tuned it last week. My local NPR is encoring the show on Saturday, and hopefully so is yours. I would encourage you to tune in. If you aren't already a NPR listener, you can visit their webpage for your local station and schedule.

I just want to post something new (since someone suggested it in a comment) before Monday's discussion of "Watch Your Mouth" gets underway.

You know it?s not really the Holiday Season without Vampires, Demons and Dragons (oh my!). Wait? maybe that?s just my household. Here are three books that might give you a Christmas gift idea for that weird friend of yours.

Eragon, by 19-year-old Christopher Paolini, was a wonderful, if a little rough around the edges, fantasy tale. It?s definitely Tolkien-esque (some would say TOO Tolkien-esque) in the sense that that there are Dwarves, Elves and a ?Middle Earth? feel to the story. The main character is a boy named Eragon who happens upon a dragon egg. The egg hatches for him, he learns to become a dragon rider, builds a remarkable bond with his dragon and meets interesting characters while quest for revenge. This is the first in a trilogy (the Inheritance Trilogy) and although I didn?t love this book, I will be checking out the second installment.

The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud was fantastic. This is the first in yet another trilogy (the Bartimaeus Trilogy) and maybe you?re rolling your eyes, thinking, ?Not ANOTHER trilogy. Man, look at what Lord of the Rings started.? But this one is completely original, highly entertaining and wicked funny. Whereas I would pick up Eragon now and then, read a bit and then go do something else, I couldn?t put this one down. It?s about a small boy magician (I know who you?re thinking of!) named Nathaniel and a demon he conjures named Bartimaeus. You can just knock those Harry Potter thoughts right out of your head because where H.P. always wants to do the good/right thing, doesn?t really know much about anything and whines all the time, Nathaniel is an 11-year-old brat hell-bent on revenge against one magician who humiliated him. He gets in way over his head and Bartumeaus is along for the ride (against his will). This book is great and you should buy it as a Christmas gift for a young (or young at heart) family member/friend.

[Aside: Has anyone else noticed that lots of new hardcover fantasy children?s chapter books tend have blue covers after The Order of the Phoenix came out? I noticed this about Eragon and Bartimaeus. It makes me wonder if the publishers are hoping children will say, ?Gran, for Christmas all I want is harrypotterandtheorderofthephonix! Okay? {Granny looks unsure.} Um, it?s a blue hardcover book in the children?s section.? Then, whoops, Granny purchases Eragon by mistake and the child hates his grandmother for the rest of his life. But, maybe this isn?t the case because The Eternity Code and The Thief Lord had blue covers way before The Order of the Phoenix? And why would a kid not have a copy a Harry Potter by now, anyway?]

Sunshine by Robin McKinley was good. It?s scary and all about vampires. It took me a while to get used to the stream of conscious style of writing, but it?s one of the best vampire books I?ve read. Neil Gaiman highly praised this book and you can read what he said here. You can read what I wrote about it (today) here.

This is based on one of Mary's comments:

"I really liked your recommendation of Ender's Game. It was a fun coming of age story and didn't contain too much crapnobabble (which I think can turn a good plot idea into a bunch of nonsense). Are there other books like this you could recommend?" - Marydell

(Rich, I hope I'm not stepping on your toes by answering a query addressed to you! :-)

Here's a quick list of some SF that I love:

Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper - This isn't hard SF; in fact the science is pretty soft but Piper wrote all his novels allegorically and Little Fuzzy has some connections to race, religion and what makes us intelligent.

Gun, With Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem - Lethem doesn't write SF. He's a modern lit. kind of author (Motherless Brooklyn was absolutely, stare-at-the-wall-in-a-blank-daze-'cause-it-hits-so-hard brilliant) but Gun is definately SF. It's one of my favorites that I re-read every couple of years.

Calculating God by Robert J. Sawyer - This book stopped me cold. It starts off being a straight-forward "the aliens have landed" type of book and ends up being the authors thoughts on death and what happens after. Good stuff.

The Light of Other Days by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter - A simple, quick read, but it makes you think.

Those are just a few quick SF favs. of mine. If you have a chance, I wouldn't mind knowing what you all think of these books...you know, if you're like me and think they're fantastic, or if you think I'm a complete loon with no grasp of good fiction. :-)

In the previous post, I mentioned Being Dead, the National Book Critics Circle Award winner for 2000. I read it, hated it, then began treating reviews with a fair amount of skepticism because book critics clearly have no taste. I wrote my own review, which I add below for your reading pleasure:

I just finished Being Dead by Jim Crace. This book is about, well, being dead. And that's it. The characters aren't particularly interesting. Dialogue is almost nonexistent. There's barely a plot other than a thin story arc describing the events of the deceased's last day through the discovery of their bodies. The murderer disappears as stealthily as he arrives, and I got the impression that no one is intent on looking for him. In addition, the victims are so dull that you don't even feel sorry for them.

The only thing I can say in the book's defense is that it's beautifully written. But does it mean anything? A story isn't a great piece of literature just because an author is adept at composing prose. I'll give you an example of a piece I wrote myself:

I stepped onto the cool tile and was soon comforted by its smooth familiarity. Crossing the room, I paused as my face glided across the mirror. For a moment I contemplated the lines near my eyes which have become ever more pronounced with the passing years. The soft light above spread across the porcelain, hiding its stark whiteness under a warm blanket of ochre. Pools of darkness formed in the folds of my slacks as they slid down my thighs and calves to the floor below. Now seated, I was awash with contentment as the day's detritus flowed from my secret inner folds and splashed into the gaping mouth of the awaiting basin.

In case you missed it, I just took a beautifully written shit. And that's what this book is like. A beautifully written yet unsentimental account of murder, carrion, decay, rot, scavengers, and maggots. In particular, I didn't appreciate the numerous paragraphs discussing the dead man's penis from the moment of death to how the mortician will insert a plastic plug to keep his liquefying innards contained.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't get artsy crap like this. After I'm dead, I'll have eternity to contemplate its condition. In life, I'd much rather be entertained and amused. - May 31, 2001

Anyone else read it and think I'm dead wrong?

Before the discussion gets going, I just wanted to pop in and post that I hope many members have managed to read A Canticle for Leibowitz. Although I don?t read much science fiction, I did enjoy it, but more for its post-apocalyptic vision than its connection to technology and outer space. I especially appreciated Miller?s use of irony as well as his take on the post- and once again pre-destruction Catholic hierarchy.

It?s very timely to be reading a novel about religion and end times since that LaHaye and Jenkins piece of crap Armageddon is in its fifth week atop the NY Times Best-Sellers List. Although I haven?t read it, I did read Left Behind just to see what all the fuss was about. I found it dull and predictable with some of the most ridiculous dialogue I?ve ever encountered in print. The plot itself is fine, but the characters are flat, unimaginative, and not-very-quick-on-the-uptake and I have to admit I wouldn?t want any of them leading the battle against the anti-Christ if the theory of the Rapture turns out to be true (which it isn?t, but, then again, I am a non-believer). Even their names are trite: "Buck" Williams, Rayford Steele, and Nicolae Jetty Carpathia. Puh-lease.

I?m looking forward to following up A Canticle for Leibowitz with Blindness, which is similar yet not similar. Although it isn?t about end times, it does deal with how humanity reacts to an event leading to the complete breakdown of society. Blindness is very difficult to read since Saramago writes using an unconventional format in which dialogue by multiple characters is embedded in the same paragraph without quotation marks. After a while, though, reading 300+ pages of dialogue-less text becomes easier to bear since it sort of forces the reader into experiencing the characters? dismay at who said what. I hope everyone also participates in this discussion because I found it to be a rewarding look at human nature.

For those into nonfiction, Katharine Graham's Personal History is pretty spectacular. Granted, I'm a journalism junkie and therefore biased, but it's good stuff. (Rich, I wonder how you would react to her budding feminism and analysis of Watergate. Hee!)

I know we don't discuss nonfiction books, but does anyone have any favorites they want to recommend?

My personal picks are:

West with the Night (Memoir of Beryl Markham, a horse trainer and later pilot in east Africa who became the first person to fly across the Atlantic east to west)

The Last Apocalypse (History looking at the state of the world at the last turn of the millenium)

The Fatal Shore (Robert Hughes on the convict founding of Australia)

Pretty much everything by Bill Bryson (travel/language)

Pretty much evertyhing by Tim Cahill (Travel -- and the man who came up with the best description of a durian ever: "... tastes like an onion-fed mouse crawled inside a mongo and died." True! And smells like a diaper.)

What do you suggest?

Hi Guys. I'm still waiting on my copy of Noir. Sure hope it comes soon. Thank goodness I have to the 21st!!!!

Meantime, I just finished Ya-Ya Sisterhood...of which I enjoyed the first half. "I want to live my life without ambition or anxiety. I want to live my life as a porch." I was sitting on my balcony when I read that....facing Reynolds Mountain at sunset. LOVELY.

But I hated the ending which reinforces the FACT (?!) that a woman's ultimate fulfillment can only be achieved when she has partnered up in marriage. Spinsterchicks hate that shit. And I am deeply offended by any author (or editor) who feels compelled to italicize the theme of the novel ...assuming I am too STOOPID to recognize it. AAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHHH. Glad I got that off my chest. Anybody else reading recreationally?