The Joke's Over by Ralph Steadman   2006 Harcort Press

An interesting insight, sometimes a bitter rake, but overall a worthwhile read. Who'd of thought the illustrator behind many of the works of Hunter S. Thompson had a life of his own? Written from the shadow of arguable greatness Steadman lends his insider's voice to the clamor of voices trying to understand and account for one of the 20th centuries most controversial men of letters. Do his stories make me like hunter less? No. Does it make me like Steadman? Not really. As much as I love hearing the stories around Thompson's insane career I never appreciate a whining tone and Steadman does on occasion take the opportunity to lash out against this man who clearly was a number one asshole. I'd love to read the book hunter could have written about Steadman.

From the early years, Hunter's prose was often married to Steadman's unique artwork until they just seemed to be one and the same. To his credit Steadman's art is the perfect accompaniment to Hunter's work. Though there are many representation of Steadman's art work in the book I wish they had been given more prominence.

The Soul Thief by Charles baxter  2008 Random House

"As an apartment this one was not so unusual, especially for a single man. Cluttered and disorderly, every item indispensable, the spaces filled with the rack and ruin of a solitary life, this apartment served up an antidote to emptiness with a messy mind-stultifying profusion. The rooms looked like the temporary unsupervised housing of someone with a ravening spiritual hunger, a grandiloquent vacancy that would consume anything to fill up the interior space where a soul should be. "

So sayeth I re: this book. It seems unfair as I can find no particularly objectionable elements. The best thing about this book was finding a few $100.00 bills stashed in it's back pages from recent travels. Clearly I thought it so unremarkable that I figured even the dullest thief would pass over it even though it had "thief' in the title. I forgot all about this book immediately after reading it, though I do remember thinking that the author was occasionally clever and that probably his other books might not be so forgettable.

The Post Birthday World by Lionel Shriver   2007 Harper

I don't want to waste too much time on this review as I feel I have already wasted too much time in reading this 500 page + manifesto to the peccadilloes of the ego ad infinitum. But wait. That's harsh. Appropriate, sure, but harsh. The truth of our innermost desires and insecurities, however sordid or inconsequential, however lurid or mundane should and must be acknowledged but the question remains as to whether or not it should ever be allowed to consume five hundred pages of otherwise pristine blank paper. It's bad enough to live in the banal every day mind of our heroine / author but, and this is the crazy part, the book is two stories, two alternative futures based on the premise of one kiss or not one kiss. One future if the kiss happens, one if not. Double the words, double the pain.

A tome that addresses the very real traumas of everyday intra personal relationships has merit, but, if it never, ever, addresses concerns of human enterprise or existence beyond the petty concerns of personal insecurity it goes beyond the ultimate yawn factor and into the realm of why bother. I hate to say it but I bet this book makes it into the must read lists of book clubs and I bet the author is welcomed by the daytime talk show TV hosts anxious to sell cleaning products and personal hygiene to millions of otherwise hungry and vacant consumers of externalized experience. Whoops. Too much good time expended on too little.

"For chances are that at some point along the line you will hold in your hands another person's heart. There is no greater responsibility on the planet. However you contend with this fragile organ, which pounds or seizes in accordance with your caprice , will take your full measure."

Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates by Tom Robbins    Bantom Dell 2000

Robbins could write his way into the panties of any grammar compulsive, vocabulary obsessed school marm and somehow make it seem as if it were her idea. This book is a romp of words and spuriously decorative suggestion, at once a curious mix of cartoon and spiritual incisive wisdom.

As with anything Robbinesque it requires suspension of belief while simultaneously challenging and championing belief. Tongue in cheek with Robbins requires opening your interpretation of that colloquialism to all parts of the anatomy.

I thoroughly enjoyed sharing my time with the mind of such a literary rascal (and deviant). Thank god (or whatever) that he is here to keep us all in line and nudge the sedentary center a bit in his direction.

A little tiring is his dependence on remarkable coincidence time and again. And some might criticize his almost masterbatory use of metaphor and simile, but hey, he never pretended to be Hemmingway and it's nice to see english words in print that you don't often run across.

So, if you are willing to wade into the kaleidoscopic spider web of his musings, you'll be rewarded with more than the usual fare of insights and chuckles.

"Do you suppose I might lubricate my cognitive apparatus with some squeezings from your swell vineyard?"

"Because he was born on the cusp between Cancer and Leo...he both craved the familiarity of a private, personal, domestic space and loathed the idea of being fettered by permanence or possession. At least, astrologers would attribute the ambivalence to his natal location. Someone else might point out that it was simply an acute microcosmic reflection of the fundamental nature of the universe."

Angelica by Arthur Phillips  Random House 2007

Whereas Phillips earlier works intrigued with the currency of timeliness and wordplay (Prague) and carefully unfolding narrative (The Egyptologist) Angelica seems to me a play of styles and ambiguities rather than of substance. Written in a Victorian novel style, set in the late 1800's, the story surrounding the four year old Angelica is told from the perspective of the main characters, one by one. This devise craftily mirrors the beginnings of psychotherapy and the spider web of perspectives and subconscious possibilities that are always the tangled root of any story.  It is not so much the actions of the story but the perceptions, real or otherwise, that inform the reader.

Although this is a clever exercise it alone does not warrant a whole hardy recommendation of this work. Though I was less than ecstatic with this tome I will continue to wait anticipatorily for any further works by Phillips. He is an exciting and valuable addition to American literature.

Born Standing Up by Steve Martin  2007  Scribner

Martin is clearly a treasure, arguably a genus and without a doubt a gentleman and a scholar. Here is his stand-up biography, his story of his early years working for Disneyland, for Knotts Berry Farm, small clubs and finally his entry into the world of huge fame and enormous success. Martin is not the best writer in the world but his prose is easy to read and his story is immensely interesting. If you have any interest in stand-up or in Steve Martin or in Saturday Night Live, or film or The Smother's Brothers or magic or the Tonight Show, etc. this will be an easy and fun read for you.

I have always been a big fan of Steve Martin. I have found it fascinating that he is so well considered as a serious art collector while making silly movies. I have been wowed by his grace in movement.

"The razor's edge is a book about a quest for knowledge. Universal, final, unquestionable knowledge. I was swept up in the book's glorification of learning and the idea that, like a stage musician, I could have secrets possessed by only a few."

Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen   2006 Algonquin Books

Laced with vintage photos this book draws on historical record to weave a tale of circus life during the depression for the rail circus's traveling across America. I was transfixed by the details of the enormous challenge of setting up and tearing down, of feeding great crews and even greater animals. i was horrified by the harshness of conditions endured by those who chose this way of life.

Gruen chooses this environment to weave a tale of love and murder and brutality and hilarity. Good story, well told.

What is the What by Dave Eggers  2006 Random House

Eggers does it again. What an undertaking to write a book about the "lost boys of Sudan". In a nation besieged by revolution and poverty refugees took to the jungles and paths to try to escape the government troops, the guerillas and the people of other countries trying to keep them out. In this real and horrifying reality groups of children, often no older than five years would walk for months trying to find a safe refuge.

Eggers tells the tale with the remarkable wordsmanship that has made his earlier works classics. He deftly gets inside the head of his main character and tells his story honestly and passionately.

Saving Fish From Drowning by Amy Tan  2006 Ballantine Books

This book has all the ingredients for a wonderful novel. And it almost succeeds.  But, alas, it doesn't. It's a fine book, mind you, a page turner once you've gotten half way through, but Tan fails in a few specific ways. First, her characters are cartoonish and never really achieve Pinochian humanism. They are characterizations of generally the worst, shallowest of human characteristics. Granted, a book has only so much room and Tan tries to fill it with many characters but she either tries too hard or doesn't try hard enough. The next problem I had was with her pace. It took forever to get involved with the story and once hooked the play was jerky and sporadic. A scene might take 20 pages and then in the next page a weeks resolution would be quickly wrapped up. It left me jumpy. The rushed ending and "clever" tying-up at the end left me cold as well. Tan paints a picture of a unique place, Myanmar, and unique circumstances but a veteran like her should have told a smoother story.

"In recent years, I have looked more often at my intentions. What inconsistent hodgepodge of my unexamined religious, social, political and moral beliefs has served as my unconscious guide? From that melange, what have I selected as my beliefs and how well do they stand up to scrutiny, daily application and emergency use? Which beliefs have I never questioned? Should I now? How malleable are they? What do I use to chip away such assumptions?"

The Medici by Paul Strathern  2003 Pimlico

Ok. Perfect book, perfect place. Florence, Italy. I was there with Patrick, Encarna and, of course, the lovely Tessa. P & E gave me this book after our visit to the Accedemia and the Offici Museums, after we had seen in person the works (the actual canvasses) of Botticelli and Michelangelo and Da Vinci. This book put everything I was seeing and feeling in perspective.  What was the Renaissance?  How did it happen? Who funded it - because, as we all know, great works come at a price. You cannot talk of the Renaissance without talking about the Medici family who largely protected, supported, encouraged and enabled the great works that we still today travel to Italy to witness. This family has more to do with the way we think, with the way we live our lives, with the way history unfolded than I ever imagined a single family could have power to do.

It is the fourteenth century and a wealthy Florentine family becomes fascinated with the manuscripts preserved from over 1000 years before and a new way of thinking gradually spreads through a network of artists and friends. Humanism penetrates the cardboard rigidity of the church's explanations of everything. Personality emerges in painting, in sculpture, and the artist, himself, becomes so much more than a technician. Through this the Medici family pursues relentlessly the power and influence that would bring them unimaginable riches and influence. From banking origins the family evolves and includes two popes and the queen of France. What a story!

What a read. What an education. Thank you Patrick and Encarna.

"The emphasis here, then as now, was on the wide range of intellectual understanding that lies between theology, on the one hand, and natural philosophy (science) on the other. Humanism, and the humanities, would encourage the understanding of the human, rather than the spiritual or technological aspects of learning.  These were the first stirrings of the recognition of individual personality as a general human trait."

The White Island by Stephen Armstrong   Corgi Press 2004

Thanks again Peter for giving me this surprisingly enjoyable and informative book. I had never heard of the island of Ibiza, off the southern Mediterranean coast of Spain, much less knew any of it's history as an outpost of the Mesopotamian, Cartehenian, Roman, French and Spanish empires. But there is something more going on in Ibiza that has insured its' place through the ages as a place of tolerance and barely masked hedonism. This is a wonderful tale of history with fascinating stories of the characters and movements that have inhabited this beautiful island. Told well. Great summer read.

"Perhaps, if mass tourism has a purpose, it is this: to let nations sis side by side on beaches without trying to kill one another."

Wobegone Boy by Garrisson Keiler 

Here now is just the book to find when you are out of the country having exhausted the supply of reading you brought along and are in fact kind of missing home just a tad.  Garrison has his detractors and I sympathize with them. But I am not one of them. I have listened to his radio show over 30 years and find it still delightfully dorky and often poignant. This is only the second book of his I have read and I could not help but laugh out loud over and over. Is it because he is so familiar? Or because he presses the midwestern, lutheran, scandinavian buttons that I could not help but be born with? Or, perhaps he's just a marvelous storyteller. Whatever, this may not be the most important book you ever read but for quick enjoyment you can't go wrong.

The Lives of Harry Sanders by Lawrence Sanders   1986 Berkley Books

"Their love is rut. So powerful and overwhelming that emotion becomes skimmed stuff. Whispers cannot be heard in their howls. They seek the limit. But there is no limit this side of death. They push at the boundary. Physical craving replaces hunger and thirst...Louder cries, Sharper bites. Surrender to frenzy. Until they become insentient. Nothing to them but raw response. Mindless and tingling. Return to the ooze. World forgotten. Faith lost. God forsaken."

God forgive me. I was desperate for a book in English.

Blinding Light by by Paul Theroux  2005 First Mariner Books

I like paul Theroux.  His travel books have sustained and goaded me over the years.  This novel has a bright premise and parts of it are very entertaining.  But what is this lust for lust?  Can it be impossible to sell a book without wide eyed orgasmic sexuality on every page? I'm not one to be prudish, on the contrary, I think sexuality drives the history of mankind, but, when it becomes ever more tantalizing, ever more over the top, ever more impossible to believe then it's just gone too far. This is a situation where sexuality is essential to the story but takes off with the writer's best interests and leads him into dark, dangerous and unnecessary alleyways.

All in all I recommend the book - if only for the craft of Theroux's writing and the novelty of the premise. but be ready to become desensitized to ever more tantalizing, ever more amazing, ever more unbelievable (ever more unnecessary) s.e.x.

"Memory helped, desperation helped, blindness did the rest. he could see with his teeth, his tongue, his lips, his face, his whole body.  He knew later that the two must have been making love - an unmistakable vibrato, the specific sounds irregular, like a lapse from ordinary life.  Not like sex between a man and a woman, a pattern of slaps he knew, a familiar rhythm, a top and bottom, an act writhing echoic, but instead a tussle of equals, the percussive kisses, the whappity whap of two women: a sudden sapphic sandwich with no filling."

"People might call themselves perfectionists, but at the bottom of pedantry is an abiding laziness. Raise enough objections and you never have to accomplish anything."

Dogs and Demons by Alex Kerr   2001 Hill and Wang

Japan has not been anxious to reveal much about itself. In fact, the opposite could be said to be true to the point of near xenophobia. So it is little wonder that this inside look at the workings and mind set of the Modern Japanese society is so surprising and educational.  Kerr examines the bureaucratic, economic and social realities of a people trapped in historical forces that are at great odds with the rest of the world.

In a few short years Japan went from seeming on the edge of world domination to a country who's stock market, real estate, educational system, art and architecture have been in spectacular decline. The reasons for this are complicated and not understandable in western terms but Kerr takes us through the steps necessary to understand. A true world power in the arts, the military, education and finance, Japan now is a country of infants who's greatest preoccupation is "Hello Kitty" ( happy faced wide eyed animals), who's greatest contribution to the arts is Pokemon and who's publishing industry is dominated by Anima comic books. Once dominating the world financial markets, claiming the top ten capitalized banks in the world, Japan now has only six banks in the world's top 100 and none of them in the top 20. Real estate values have dropped 400%. National pride encourages a nation of propaganda, self delusion and resistance to globalization. Twenty percent of the population is dependant on a bureaucratic and corrupt, massive public works "welfare" system that has concreted every river in the country and adds dozens and dozens of new dams every year - needed or not. And on and on. What an eye opener.

I recommend this book. Japan is a country we need to understand if only because of the leverage they exercise on our own future, holding trillions of U.S. dollars. This is very interesting reading in light of the new Asian power, China, about to eclipse Japan as a powerhouse with immense influence over our own reality.

The Pineapple, King of Fruits by Fran Beauman    2001 Vintage

Who ever would have guessed the pineapple had such an interesting history.  It's early association with the explorations of new worlds and the wonder of new new tastes and the marvels of an expanding concept of geography made it tremendously appealing to the royalty and the rich of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.  No costs were spared to possess, and indeed to cultivate this amazing and delicate treasure. Although a bit over informed by the end of the book I was, never-the-less entertained by the stories of this fruit's conquest of the west.

Breaking The Spell by Daniel C. Dennett    2006 Penguin Group

Ok some people are just smart. And sometimes it is so gratifying to find that a smart person has put into words the way you have felt all along. And done it to rigorous academic standards. Thank you Daniel Dennett for writing this book.

"Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon" examines religion from a dispassionate, biological, evolutionary perspective. It asks readers to put aside all emotional filters and look at the subject objectively, from the vantage of the present going back to the beginnings of religion once humans began developing speech.  In the beginning was the word", he explains. But actually Dennet brings us much further back to the origins of life itself and the forces that allowed and encouraged it's survival. Religion must be viewed as a choice life made to carry for some kind of advantage it provided for survival. From these elementary beginnings Dennet follows the evolution of religion, of faith and of spirituality through the ages. Throughout Dennett challenges the reader to examine what is belief and what is belief in belief.

I found this book exhilarating. It is very well written and only occasionally did I find my self having to reread a page or two to keep up with him. But that's my problem.  What I mean to say is that the book is accessible to the lay reader. It is full of compelling stories, illumination, compassion and surprise. I feel smarter for having read it. I want everyone to read it.

"...modern theists might acknowledge that, when it comes to Baal and the Golden Calf, Thor and Wotan, Poseidon and Apollo, Mithras and Ammon  Ra, they are actually atheists. We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."  Dawkins

"What these people have realized is one of the best secrets of life: Let your self go. If you can approach the world's complexities, both it's glories and it's horrors, with an attitude of humble curiosity, acknowledging that however deeply you have seen, you have only just scratched the surface, you will find worlds within worlds, beauties you could not heretofore imagine, and your own mundane preoccupations will shrink to proper size, not all that important in the greater scheme of things.  That, I propose, is the secret to spirituality, and it has nothing at all to do with believing in an immortal soul, or in anything supernatural."

Dress Your Family In Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris   2004  Time Warner Book Group

Sedaris is one of the great storytellers of our time.  It would be disingenuous to compare him to Mark Twain but something of the easy conversational style, the biting satirical wit and the comedy mixed with sadness is so reminiscent. Through these little stories we learn of his screwed up family, which is really really all of our screwed up families, but Sedaris makes us laugh out loud and that makes our own reality so much more palatable. Reading this book is like sitting down with a dear friend with a glass of wine and laugh / cry for hours. What a pleasant way to pass an afternoon.

Under The Black Flag by David Cordingly   1996  Random House

We all have images of pirates that we can trace to media depictions presented to us by the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson and Walt Disney. But what was the reality of pirating, of living as a pirate or being alive in a time and place where pirates were the true terrorists? Cordingly sorts through the myths and the lies and presents a true picture based on extensive research from journals and official records of the time. The picture he presents is not pretty.  The classic age of pirating was the early years of the 18th century when the most famous of the pirates were rampaging through the waters of North America, North Africa, the Caribbean and Asia.  Men like Blackbeard and Morgan and Drake.  These were times of hardship and ruthlessness when the oceans were alive with commerce and those brave soles that ventured out were threatened by innumerable hazards, the darkest nightmare of them all being the plague of pirates. Cordingly presents this story in vivid detail, exposing the history, the motivations and the perspective of this thrilling and deadly chapter of world history. Illuminating, fascinating and disturbing. No Johnny Depps here.

The Emperor  by Ryszard Kapuscinski   1978 Harcort Press

I could not help but wonder how a Rastafarian, for whom Heili Selassie, the Emperor of Ethiopia, is none other than the Christ returned, would respond to the realities of Selassie's life as chronicled by this book. Heilie Selassie I's 44 year reign was an almost unbelievable story of luxury and excess in a land of mass starvation and poverty. Kapuscinski once again seamlessly iterates the strands of this story, weaving an understanding into the surrealistic gluttony and violence and self-delusion that was palace life in Adas Abba. Like all Kapuscinski's fine books this one reads like quickly and leaves one with an understanding that goes far deeper than the facts. Like the works of Ondaje, his books, this one included, trigger movies in my brain, scents in my nose and stories for my head. But Rasta, your god is an animal.

"his highness worked on the assumption that even the most loyal press should not be given in abundance because that might create a habit of reading, and from there it is only a single step to the habit of thinking, and it is well known what inconveniences, vexations, troubles and worries thinking causes".

Cuba Confidential by Louise Bardach  2002 Vintage Books

This book is subtitled "Love and Vengeance in Miami and Cuba" but it is less about love than it is about vengeance. Since the 1959 revolution that brought Castro to power over one million exiles have left Cuba. Most of them have taken residency in Miami where they have amassed great political and financial power working for over 40 years to end Fidel's rule. Bardach's exhaustive research uncovers the emotional and often violent tactics used by both sides in this historical battle. From the Bay of Pigs to the Cuban missile crisis to the Elian Gonzalas debacle she unmasks the aggression, the opportunism, the raw ambition and the self-interests at play. Her portrayal of the Miami cubans is especially unflattering. Thoroughly illuminating, if disheartening, this book is professionally crafted and filled with the kind of first hand reporting that brings history to life.  It leaves you dumbfounded to realize what has been going on right under your nose, right in your own back yard. Bardach gathers her information from hundreds and hundreds of interviews and spells out a sordid story of strong arm politics that reaches from the near tyrannical leadership of the Miami Cuban American Foundation to the governor of Miami to the presidency (not all that great a span at the moment). It makes you a little less proud to be an American.

Finding George Orwell in Burma by Emma Larkin, 2004  The Penguin Group

There are two things George Orwell and Burma (now Myanmar) have in common. First, Orwell actually spent five years stationed in Burma before his writing career. Second, the present military regime bears a striking resemblance to the societies Orwell describes in his works, "Animal Farm" and "Nineteen Eighty Four". The tyrannical and closed country of Myanmar is exposed through this travelogue that is interestingly and topically adorned with underground interviews and beautifully described scenes from the country and city alike.

Orwellian indeed is this modern day police state where personal libraries have to be secretly hidden and volumes passed discretely between the iconoclast intelligentsia that still exist in the quasi-safety of clandestine coffeehouses and desolate poverty and oppression. What a luxury to have the fruits of Larkins efforts and risk taking be available in the volume.

Thank you Peter for delivering it to me.

Surprised by Laughter by Stephen Carr, 2004 The Memoir Club

I have a knee jerk reaction to missionaries. This book is written by one. But I have to tell you I have come close to changing my tune, at least in regards to the work that Carr and his wife, Anne, did in Uganda over a period of decades.  Carr's recount of his life among the rural peoples of Uganda reveals a side of Africa that we seldom hear in the main stream media.  It is the sound of laughter.  It is the sweat of hard work.  It is the gleam of hope.  Against all odds, against insurmountable difficulties and unbearable political situations the stories in this book show the bravery and determination and beauty of these people. 

It is a joy to read and an illumination.

"The greater part of our happiness or misery is caused by our disposition and not by our circumstances" 

Martha Washington

Sheet rock and Shellac by David Owen, 2006 Simon & Schuster

I went into this book open minded, had a difficult time getting through the first half but was pleased to find myself enjoying things eventually. A little too much personal information, a little too slow and "Why do I care about this?" at times. But then Owen would actually get to the idea of telling you something and it was often informative and interesting.  Perhaps if the book had been congealed to one third it's present size it would be a gem.

"Home improvement is an ongoing narrative, with many authors: it's not a story with a clear beginning, middle and end."

"The phenomenal durability of spilled paint, in comparison with the fleetingness of paint that has been applied conscientiously, is a good example of the perversity of the universe."

Men, especially, have an irresistible attraction to reinforcement.  There is something appealing about the concept of hidden strength, as in the idea that Superman is lurking under the drab gray suit of that mild-mannered newspaper reporter over there. Perhaps grown men's infatuation with reinforcement, like little boy's infatuation with superhero's, arises from anxiety about our own strength. At any rate, it's a powerful force, and it doesn't apply just to concrete work."

Popco by Scarlett Thomas,  2004 Harcort Books

I found this book in the bin of leftover books at the hotel where we were staying in Belize. I wasn't expecting much under the circumstances but I was desperate and glad for anything other than a Tom Clancy novel. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it.  The writing is smart and the subject of marketing and corporate malfience definitely needs to be addressed. The story went awry here and there and left me a bit unsatisfied but the ride was definitely easy and fun.

Alice  Butler, the heroine of the novel, works for the third largest toy company in the world.  She and other company luminaries at Popco, her employer, are thrown together in a unique think-tank environment with a big challenge: to create the ultimate marketable girls toy. Her mathematics background and a mysterious cipher on a necklace given to her as a child create various threads that the novel proceeds to develop. Fun, informative and clever.

"marketing, advertising...What started off being, "Hey, we make this! Do you want it?" turned into "If you buy this you might get laid more," and then mutated into, "if you don't buy this, you'll be uncool, no one will like you, everyone will laugh at you and you may as well kill yourself now. I'm telling you this because I am your friend and you have to trust me."

Life of Pi by Yann Martel, 2001 Random House

Once again, (but never often enough) the right book arrived at exactly the right moment. When I recently exhausted my reading material with two days remaining at the beach Tessa recommended "Life of Pi" and, along with the warm tropical rain, everything became serendipity. What a wonderful book to surrender to. It is a classic story of survival in an almost whimsical fairytale. Martel has you hooked immediately and sitting on the edge of your gunnels the whole trip. The balancing act of believability is masterfully accomplished. His skill at description has you feeling the sun and the waves and smelling the things left rotting on the bottom of the boat. He can make your eyes well up at the thought of sweet gathered rainwater. He pulls just so at your heart keeping you tethered to the main characters because you care.

Part Rushdi, part Antoine de Saint Exupéry, part "Lord of the Flies," it is unique enough to last a long time in even an overcrowded memory.

"I'm sure even the adult viper, as it swallowed the mouse, must have felt somewhere in it's undeveloped mind a twinge of regret, a feeling that something greater was just missed, an imaginative leap away from the lonely, crude reality of a reptile".

Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowel, 2005 Simon & Schuster

I suppose it takes a certain kind of person to love this book by Sarah Vowel but I guess i am that person. This is history - the kind they never get around to teaching you in school. The beauty of this book is not just the inside story on three of America's most "important" assignations but the wit and intelligence that Vowel puts into her narrative. I know Vowel from her bits on National Public Radio and I was not disappointed by her foray into literature. Following Lincoln's assassin after the deeds done at Ford's Theatre is both interesting and informative. I loved the idea of her sleuthing around on her vacations delving into the history of specific assassinations. It's weird but important at the same time. I'm glad she spent her weekends and spare time poking around. Gladder still that she shared it with the rest of us.  This is history. Unadorned. With humor even. I loved it.

Looking For History by Alma Guillermoprieto,  2001 Random House

This book travels well. It is a series of reports based on three separate countries, the common thread being that they are all about latin countries and that they were all written with the masterful depth and perception of the author, Alma Guillermoprieto.

We are first given a non-propagandized version of the Che Guevarra story: his time before and after the Cuban revolution, his relationship with Fidel and the machismo pride that was his eventual downfall.   We then move to Peru, where for a moment in history, an intellectual and impassioned writer, Mario Lassa, in the ilk of Vaclav Havel, almost walks away with the prize of power in an unlikely place. Guillermoprieto then takes us to her homeland of Mexico, where in the late 90's, a series of unsolved murders at the highest level of politics and society combine with economic forces to topple the longest standing political party in history.

Guillermoprieto writes from a  deep bed of knowledge and compassion, bringing us into history like it was her family's kitchen.  As readers we gain an inside introduction to characters and to monumental events that have occurred within our own recent lifetimes in countries that are our latin American neighbors. It is a primer and and enjoyable adventure into history.

Living to Tell the Tale by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 2003 Random House

"Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it".

So begins the first volume of the autobiography of Marquez detailing the amazing circumstances and events and characters that filled the first 27 years of his life.  Born in Columbia at a time when "people lived in the shadow of poetry", when "poetry (was) the only concrete proof of the existence of man", Marquez was, above all else, a man of letters.  He received the Nobel Prize for literature for his "100 Years of Solitude" and at 80 years old  I am so glad that he has indeed lived long enough to "Tell the Tale".

This book is so delicately balanced, so self-effacing, so filled with the best thoughts and words of Marquez and his remarkable contemporaries that we not only get the story of one remarkable writer's coming of age but we are brought into the eccentric Marquez family and through them are able to experience the startling events of the country of Columbia in the early 20th century.

This is an education and an adventure of words both. It is a delightful book to read and I pray Marquez is busy writing the next installment which I eagerly await.

A Man Without A Country by Kurt Vonnegut, 2005 Seven Stories Press

Evidently, sometimes when you have been writing your entire life it must be difficult to stop, even when all that is left in you are the minor rants and raves of an average disillusioned aging liberal. Granted, it is always heartening to hear opposition to the mindless, violent, earth-abusing leadership now in control of this country and this beautiful planet. But Vonnegut offers us nothing more than name calling.  His disillusionment, reflected in the title of this short and inconsequential book, is nothing short of self-serving and a t best preaching to the choir.

Al Frankin did it so much better so why bother Kurt? Rest on your laurels, my friend, don't preach to me about the benefits of socialism from the porch of your comfortable mansion. Don't tell me there is no future - it is too easy for you to give up at 82. You have little future one way or the other. If you want to help, if you do still care, (and why else write?), get over yourself and do the work necessary to be helpful. Otherwise, please be quiet. I loved you for the ironic way you painted life when I was young and coming into literature. Some things are best left untouched.

The Enigma of Maccupicchu by Oscar Medina1996 Millennium Editors

I was in a bookstore in the Lima airport seeking a book to further understand the wonders surrounding what I had just experienced in Machupicchu.   I picked up this book and was reading the cover when a gentle elderly man approached  and explained that he was the author of the book. I felt compelled to purchase it hoping it would supply me the insight I was wanting. Unfortunately, it was something quite else. This is the original 'Celestine Prophesy" with an Inca twist. Full of secret societies, 600 year old Incas living in secret worlds waiting to re-populate the world after it's inevitable self-destruction. A new world speaking Queche, based on the higher values and social structure of the Incas. In other words it was a bit of a stretch in a fantasy direction that I was disappointed by.

Once I got over the amateurish typos and poor english translation I actually did enjoy it a bit, revisiting, through the pages, the truly spectacular places I had recently visited. Do not look for this book. First, you'll never find a copy and, second, you don't want to.

Running With Scissors by Augustine Burroughs, 2002 Picador

It seems necessary for some authors to write a memoir  as their first book, especially those who have experienced a torturous childhood, in order to exorcise all those developmental demons and clear a place to move on and write, if in fact, they have anything left to write about. But why should we, as readers, want to read over and over again this same story? If it offers us something more, or something better than, 'Catcher in the Rye' then sure, I'm in. But if it doesn't, as in Burrough's 'Running With Scissors', I feel more a voyeur in someone's personal journey than the recipient of exposure to good art. I'm so sorry Bouroughs had such a messed up childhood. I'm sorry his home life was so dysfunctional. I'm glad he somehow survived it all but I am sorry I had to share share it with him in such detail.

Spare yourself. Re-rear Slaughterhouse Five, or Catch 22, or some more literary, better constructed, less unappetizing story and hope that Bourroughs finds a voice more universal, a plot less predictable and a story less dependant on shocking us with the nasty habits of nasty people.  We'll see.

Now We Are Hungry by Dave Eggers, 2005 Random House

Dave Eggers writes with a confidence that makes his prose always seem spontaneous and brilliant. There is an intrinsic honesty in his words which is either  the voice of innocence or else the voice of cynicism and irony. With Eggers we can be convinced of either.

This collection of short stories rekindles my interest in the medium. He is very good. We are lucky he likes to write.

The Soccer Wars by Ryszard Kapuscinski, 1986 Granta Books

Kapucinski has more amazing stories than perhaps anyone I have ever read. For all the conflicts and wars he has pursued and reported on over the years and over the globe it is a miracle that he is alive at all to write them.  It is especially lucky for us, as readers, as his style of looking beyond the battle at hand and bringing us stories that tell the bigger picture: the plight of the real people buffeted by political and economic winds, their history, their dreams, their agony, enriches us immeasurably. Through him we are able to see the a truer picture and come to a better understanding of the forces at play. In this book of stories we travel from the Congo to Central America, from the Soviet empire to India.  In each we are introduced to new characters living through what are to us reports from an unknown hell happening far away. Illuminating and superbly written. A gift to literature.

Shalimar The Clown by Salmon Rushdie, 2005 Random House

With the brilliant style that has made him famous and earned him respect (and condemnation) around the world Rushdie has written a tale woven through the new and old worlds of Kashmir and America and all points between. This book, this prose, this personal vision into the rarified worlds of political, spiritual and personal power, revolves around a young Kashmir who, from the humblest beginnings, brings himself into the limelight of political world attention through a life of crafting his route through the deepest reaches of hell.

Rushdi's prose has a way of telling a story and devolving continuously and repeatedly deeper and deeper into the stories behind the stories until we thoroughly understand, until his characters become totally familiar, until the poignancy and marvel, the irony and despair, the hopelessness and delight become known to us. What a magic carpet ride of fine literature. Thoroughly enjoyable.

"The question of death is also the question of life, panditji, and the question of how to live is also the question of love.  That is the question you have to go on answering, to which there is no answer  except in the going on."

The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski, 1998 Penguin Books

For four decades Polish war correspondent, Kapuscinski, traveled through Africa whenever he could, documenting the people and places in the midst of siege, turning over the rocks to show his fortunate readers the truth of what lies beneath. I learned more about Africa reading this one small book than half a century of living had taught me prior. The mind of the African does not lend itself to self-criticism. This, according to Kapuscinski, is the challenge of the future for this enormous and disparate continent.  From the dusty roads deep in the Congo to teeming dangerous cities we find in his writing honest accounts of real lives that tell stories illuminating the enormous challenges and seemingly strange reactions of the Africans with one another and with the onslaught of the external world.  His writing is beautiful: clear, concise, probing. I was left with a greater understanding and a deep foreboding.  This is a must read.

"People are not hungry because there is no food in the world. There is plenty of it: there is a surplus, in fact. But between those who want to eat and the bursting warehouses stands a tall obstacle indeed: politics. Khartoum restricts the number of flights bringing supplies for the hungry. Many of the planes that reach their destination are robbed by the local chieftains. Whoever has weapons, has food.  Whoever has food, has power.  We are here among people who do not contemplate transcendence and the existence of the soul, the meaning of life and the nature of being. We are in a world in which man, crawling on the earth, tries to dig a few grains of wheat out of the mud, just to survive another day." 

Bangkok 8 by John Burdett, 2003 Alfred A. Knopf

A flight from Indonesia to Bangkok via Singapore is probably about the perfect time and place to pick up the murder mystery. Lucky me. The story is set in the streets of present day Bangkok. It offers the reader a compelling and stark view of this city of over 10 million inhabitants from an insider's point of view. The story line seemed less important than the confrontation between the western mind and the Buddhist Asian mind. Burrdett does a grand job examining western precepts from the perspective of an educated Bangkok police detective who's mother was a Thai prostitute and who's father was a long absent American serviceman who passed through Bangkok during the Viet Nam war.

The murder of an American military sergeant leads to a cascading series of revelations and incidents involving he American FBI, the local Bangkok police, Khmer Rouge gangs from Cambodia, jade dealing Chine ese merchants from the Golden triangle, meth dealers and the the whole amazingly large and varied world of Thai prostitution.

The authors' insightful knowledge of Thailand and the historic power of the Buddhist spiritualism that pervades every level of that society lends the book a deep credibility and provides an important and illuminating look at ourselves from another frame of reference. Corruption, prostitution and even life and death will never seem quite the same. Read it in Bangkok if at all possible but if you are a fan of culturally set mysteries go ahead and read it anywhere.

"What we don't realize, we Thais, is just how simple life is in the West. Too simple. The most modest of contributions - a forty hour week at the least demanding of mechanized tasks - earns one a car, an apartment, a bank account. Other gifts of the system - a spouse, a child or two, a small collection of friends - arrive automatically and gift-wrapped with support of every kind. A whole hemisphere, in other words, lies dying of event-starvation."

Sick Puppy by Carl Hiaasen, 1999 Warner Books

To read all the wonderful reviews splattered over the first pages of this book you would think you were about to enjoy one of the great moments of literature. Unfortunately, I did not find that to be the case. Nothing extraordinary what-so-ever about this silly little story about a cast of completely unlikely characters involved in a preposterous and not very entertaining plot. There is a complete lack of creating any character that breaths any kind of life. It is a comic book where the villains are really vile and the heroes are just plain stupid.

Don't get me wrong. I never wanted to abandon the book once I opened it. I simply would never recommend it. There are too many other more worthy books to be read.

The only redeeming quality is the "politically correct" quazy eco-terrorist theme running through the plot. But caricaturing evil so haplessly really does not substantiate a point of view so much as dismiss it. Be glad it's out there on the right side of the fence and not pimping the NRA but don't waste your time reading it.

So You Wanna Be A Rock & Roll Star by Jake Slichter, 2004 Broadway Books

For everyone who ever played in a garage band, who knew someone who did or ever fantasized about being a rock and roll star this will be an interesting read. If you happen to be from Mpls and were at all aware of the music scene in the early 90's this will be even more interesting. Slichter was the drummer for the band Semi-Sonic who, for a short time, rode a wave to the top with their #1 hit, "Closing Time". This book is a primer for all the craziness that accompanies success: the machinations of the business, the publicity, the politics, the money, the A & R men, video production, the power of radio conglomerates, the inside of TV production and the hassles of the road. Unfortunately, Slighter writes with an almost unbearable un sophistication and whiny voice and his "un cool" admissions would embarrass me were I another member of the band. It is so hard to feel sorry for someone who had the opportunity to actually live out an American dream. But Jake was never happy with the level of success the band achieved and was so quick to blame everyone else for his lack of super stardom.

The book was worth reading for the information it contained about the nuts and bolts of the business but I left it unsympathetic to the protagonist. If you have an interest in music or the Mpls rock scene I would read it. Otherwise not.

The General In His Labyrinth by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1990 Alfred A. Knopf

Simon Bolivar almost succeeded in his lofty goal of liberating all of South America from the colonial powers that controlled it in the early days of the nineteenth century. But he lived to see many of his dreams and ambitions crumble amid the decay of his own health. This book chronicles his last days, trying to keep his dreams alive while his followers dwindle and his resources evaporate. Bolivar was never in doubt about his own place in history. He was born a true megalomaniac, a genius, a remarkable warrior, a lover of renown, a masterful politician and a brutal ruler. He carved out independence for Venezuela, Columbia, Ecuador and all the way to Peru. He traveled often to Europe and was a learned gentleman of the highest order. His dream of controlling and uniting all of South America never was to be realized but his place in history is significant.

Marquez, as in his other books, tells this story with an insiders canny understanding of people and place. The prose is immanently readable. The book is an education and I highly recommend it.

Too Weird For Ziggy by Sylvie Simmons, 2004 Gove Atlantic

The only thing weirder than a rock and roll lifestyle is perhaps a book about it. As if this lifestyle isn't perverse and stupid enough this book seems to celebrate the most bizarre stories of them all. The somewhat interrelated stories are testaments for the pedophile, the misogynist and the ignorant. But, of course, it is a tad fascinating and aren't we all just a little more than curious about the lives of our entertainment "gods"?

Sylvia's writing is clear and concise thanks to her years as a British rock journalist. Her cast of characters and all unsympathetic ass holes so it's kind of hard to get through your disgust level to even find the prose but when you do you find it exact and polished.

This is not a book I would recommend to many people, very few in fact, and you can thank me for weeding it out for you. Thankfully it was a quick and easy read and did not use up much of my time.

Sandra Benitz writes like someone well versed in oration tells a great story. One simply sits back and listens with their eyes while her voice carries you along. This story of the guerilla war in El Salvador in 1980 voices the story of the peasants caught in the middle of this conflict. The plot revolves around Nicolas, in his nine year old voice, who is systematically"enlisted" by opposing forces. It is about his courage and the courage of those around him as they try to make sense of and survive a world fallen into chaos and turmoil.

This is a fine read by a local artist (Mpls). It is a part of American history that needs to be told again in a world that finds it difficult to learn necessary lessons. Highly recommended.

Steve Martin, actor, comedian, playwright and author has only improved his exalted place in my esteem with this little novella. A sweet insight into a man, full of neurosis, who dares to open himself to living. It's funny, sweet, insightful and a delight to spend an afternoon reading. Highly recommended. 

"I was getting a little nervous about the letters' frequent repetition of the word freedom. It could be an example of a small truth I had uncovered in my scant 35 years of life: that the more a word is repeated, the less likely it is that the word applies."

LLosa tells the stories of two people in search of their own ideal, their own ways to paradise, side by side in this story of Flora Tristan and the grandson she never knew, Paul Gaugan. In the mid 1800's Flora tries to organize women and laborers into a workers party supporting her ideas of a utopian society based on complete equality. Near the end of the century Paul Gaugan, the painter, abandons the corruption of society and it's institutions of religion and capitalism and moral oppression and travels to the south seas in search of a world of innocence. Neither Flora nor Paul achieved their goals but  but the ardor of their beliefs in the face of debilitating physical maladies makes for an interesting story of the human spirit and it's tenacious desire for paradise. The book is sprinkled with cameos from the real lives of these two characters: Karl Marx, Vincent Van Gogh and others, and is filled with the the sometimes horrifying details of life in Paris in the 1850's and in Tahiti 40 years later. It's an interesting read  though a bit longer than might be necessary. 

"....he became caught up in long, incomprehensible soliquies on art's need to exchange the  the Western model of beauty created by the Greeks, with it's harmoniously proportioned white men and women, for the unharmonious, asymmetrical, and bold acetic values of primitive peoples, who's prototypes of beauty were more original, varied and impure than European prototypes."

Just because I was skipping Christmas I read this sap. What an obvious, nasty, mindless waste of words. John, John, John...don't you have enough money already? What about pride John?

Popular Music From Vittula by Mikael Niemi , 

Niemi's book was a fun Garrison Keillor like romp through the far north territories above Scandinavia. At once exotic and startlingly familiar to someone like myself with Swedish lineage and growing up dangerously close to Ely and Canada. I loved his story-telling and the empathy he obviously has toward his harsh and brutish childhood home. What a goldmine of raw human action and inaction. In a hard world the best and the worst of men come to the surface and Niemi is there to skim the surface and mine the depths.

Highly recommended.

"There are dead stars that still shine because their light is trapped in time. Where do I stand in this light, which does not strictly exist?"

DeLillo's worthy theme and sometime eloquent passages cannot redeem this implausible story line with a main character who is decidedly unsympathetic and unredeemable. At the height of the dot com bubble a billionaire directs his limo driver across Manhattan for a haircut. In the next 12 hours he will experience riots, multiple sexual encounters, murder and everything in between as he flirts with understanding his soul and the soul of a new technological dawn. The story never is able to engage the reader and bring us along for the ride. And why, oh why, must some male authors insist their characters bang every woman they encounter? Perhaps DeLillo should worry less about banging out a new book every year for his publisher and get out and get laid himself. Read this only if you've read most everything else. 

"Burma" is one of those books that is probably just great within it's own genre. But being a genre I don't particularly appreciate (foreign espionage, thriller) I didn't really like this book. Why did I buy it?  For the title. I was in Bangkok looking forward to 20 hours or so of air travel and had just finished my last book. Burma interested me and midnight is a time of day I experience on a daily basis so I was hoping to get lucky. I had mixed luck. The book was good enough to keep me occupied long past Tokyo but I sure got tired of reading about what gun, what part of who's body got blown off and how and why oh why, again, are all adventurous capable women  in the third world wearing mini-skirts and able to fire an AK47 and are never overweight? The book is about drugs, politics, espionage, money and sex with a bit of Burma thankfully thrown in. Hey, what's not to like? 

Judging from the pages of accolades preceding this book I was expecting a work as surprising and entertaining as Garland's first book, The Beach. I was mildly disappointed.  Garland does paint a rich picture of modern day Manilla, the Philippines,  in a story rich with characters but with a plot less meant to entertain than to attempt to make some sort of sense of a seemingly senseless world by tying discordant story lines together to make destiny seem inevitable if not choreographed. Is Garland helping us to find our place or a form of complacency and acceptance of a brutal and unfair world or, as reader/audience are we helping him? A nicely written work, overly self-conscious, but definitely worth a look. 

Muchas Gracias to my dear friend Gregg  who passed this gem on to me as a birthday gift. A delightful, informative read. Pollen walks through his garden with the eyes of plants themselves. His account of the co-evolution of humans and plants takes humans off the pedestal of their own self importance. All this time we thought we were engineering plants  but when looked at from another point of view we are no different to the plants than the bumble bee, a servant in their service, working for the benefit of the most successful species. The book goes into detail about the history and science of four plants: the apple, the tulip, cannabis and the potato. What amazing stories he tells about each. Johnny Apple seed brings hard cider to the settlers, the tulip mania of the 1300's in Holland, pot growers in Amsterdam and genetically altered potatoes in the US. I very highly recommend this book. 

"The cannaboids are molecules with the power to make romantics and transcendentalists of us all. By disabling our moment by moment memory, which is ever pulling us off the astounding frontier of the present and throwing us back into the mapped byways of the past, the cannaboids open a space for something nearer to direct experience. By the grace of this forgetting, we temporarily shelve our inherited way s of looking and see things as if for the first time".

"Midway through the journey of our life, I found myself within a dark wood, for the right way had been lost".  Dante

1865 Boston. A group of poet celebrities including H.W. Longfellow, Oliver Wendel Holmes, James Russel Lowell and George Washington Green meet weekly to collaborate on the translation of Dante's 500 year old poem, Divine Comedy.  Social conservatism and cultural nativism stand in the way of their progress as does a (fictional) series of murders  coincidentally timed with the progress of their work. All these events attempt to derail the translation turning these literary wonderkinds into sleuths to find the truth. Interesting in it's historical context and easy enough prose but I found the premise a bit forced and ungainly and it proved not to be a book demanding to be picked up and devoured.  Perhaps I resent the liberties involved in fictionalizing scenarios of real people. We owe them, perhaps, the honesty of using their own words exclusively. I can't recommend it highly. 

As if we didn't know. 

The Quiet American, a man bound by idealistic but dangerously foolish notions, is the first OSS operative from the USA in Vietnam in the early 50's during the French Indochina conflict. His story is told by a seasoned, somewhat embittered, English war reporter living in Saigon. Green's inimitable style  and his ability to reach into the soul of his characters paints a story of war, honestly told, and the politics that superceded the value of human life.  Also poignant is the foretelling  of the debacle that was to come with America's involvement in this part of the world. As usual Green scores big with this well told story, prescient viewpoint and vastly important book. 

"Death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again forever. I envied those who could believe in a god and I distrusted them. I felt like they were keeping their courage up with a fable of the changeless and the permanent. Death was far more certain than god, and with death there would be no longer the daily possibility of love dying".

Thanks again Pamela for this recommendation. What a fun little adventure into the kitchens of New York's finer eating establishments. Bourdain's book is a revelation of a lifestyle both barbaric and uniquely refined. His stories of the helacious conditions surrounding the production of truly great food is fascinating and grotesque. Why anyone would ever consider this lifestyle is beyond me and maybe that's why he self describes he and his ilk as miscreants and outlaws. But his devotion to food shines through and you come to realize that these ragged idiot savants are exactly who you'd want preparing the perfect meal. Who else could or would pull it off? Humorous every page. Enlightening, entertaining. A wonderful adventure.

"If you are easily offended by direct aspersions on your lineage, the circumstances of your birth, your sexuality, your appearance, the mention of your parents possibly commingling with livestock, then the world of professional cooking is not for you."

2,600 years ago on the island of Lesbos in the great age when trade blossomed in the eastern Mediterranean there lived an actual woman who's songs survive to this day - on scraps of parchment and in the legends  passed on through the ages. Sappho was known throughout this ancient world and her songs say much about the unchanging nature of love and lust, of power and wisdom. Jong has researched her character well and has woven a story of her life that is compelling and informative. How this woman could have attained such fame and power in a world generally misogynist in the time of the building of the great sphinx's of Egypt, the advent of the great city states like Sparta and Athens, when learned men traveled to the oracle at Delphi to sort out truths from the myriad of gods and goddesses of the region is a compelling mystery and Jong does an admirable job weaving plausible truth from this time straddling the modern world and pre-history. 

"I think of all the daughters who died in childbirth, all the granddaughters who died trying to come into this world of darkness and light - and I rejoice for you - despite the treachery of men...It is not so bad - this gift the gods gave us. It is a mixture of pain and pleasure, of sweets and bitters, like all gifts, but it is our to keep awhile and revel in."

There are some books you just feel everyone should read. Thanks to Heinz for sending this one my way. As Ehrenreich says the rich and powerful are eminently visible but a large group of Americans are barely surviving in obscurity. This book puts a human face on the 20% of Americans struggling to survive working our hardest and most humbling jobs, caught under the barbed wire of a livable wage.  Ehrenreich  dons the life of this dispossessed class and joins the workforce of waitresses, cleaning help and Walmart employees. Her report back is startling, troubling and filled with humanity. She reports on a class of people, hardworking, honest, capable yet denied the privilege of health care, housing security and generally having to work two jobs just to live in horrible conditions trapped in a society  with no interest in coming to their aid. Please read this book.

"Something is wrong, very wrong, when a single person in good health, a person who in addition possesses a working car, can barely support herself by the sweat of her brow."

This book was hysterical for about the first third of it but the joke got tired eventually and the yuks came less and less frequently. It was a good barb on a generation filled with self importance. Light, good for a giggle, not all that important as a book. 

"Because baby boomers have spent so much of their lives either being young, wishing they were still young, trying to recapture their lost youth or pretending that they are still young, they have not put the proper emotional distance between their births and their deaths."

Chabon's  650 page odyssey takes place over the span of a couple of decades and travels seamlessly from the prewar Nazi-invaded streets of Prague to the fantastic imaginings of the early comic book writers in New York. Along the way Houdini style escapism weaves it's slight of hand to create a rich, full, informative and mystical journey through the rise and fall of the fortunes of the two main characters. As I read I was constantly aware of the unique glimpses of an American dream being dreamt, being lived, being created. I came away much informed, much intrigued and much entertained. Chabon is a masterful American writer who has proved with this book, his most ambitious, that his writing skills are constantly improving and the depth of his rich prose is growing. This book is a gift of imagination. It is a unique perspective on the great American story, just when you thought it was over-told, he has exposed the magicians trick so that we might watch and understand. Highly recommended.

"Joe loved his comic books: Most of all he loved them for the pictures and stories they contained, the inspirations and lucubration's of five hundred aging boys dreaming as hard as they could for five hundred years, transfiguring their insecurities and delusions, their wishes and their doubts, their public education's and their sexual perversions, into something that only the most purblind of societies would have denied the status of art."

Ever since the character played by John Cusak in the movie High Fidelity listed "Cash by Johnny Cash" as his number one book I knew I would have to read it. I sure didn't hurt that I loved this movie a whole lot. The book proved not to be my number one favorite but certainly was an eye opener and a fast fun book in many respects. 

Cash is pretty easy to read, straightforward, honest and informative. His life story is definitely worthy of a book (or two). From very humble beginnings to the top back down through repeated drug crises and back up. He has met five presidents, toured with the little Memphis band of newcomers including Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis and Roy Orbison among others. Along the way he befriended the likes of Dylan, Willie Nelson, Billy Graham and Tom Petty. This honest telling of the story of the Man In Black is filled with anecdotes that surprised me with their candor and insights. I have a much better understanding of the origins of the Memphis sound, of life on the road, and of this remarkable man's journey bringing his unique brand of music to the people. 

Arthur Phillips first book is a gem. It is 1990 in Budapest and the fall of the Soviet Union has freed Turkey and caused a rush of expats: some running in with venture capital, some with political purposes, some blown by the winds of happenstance and many following the artistic nose that continually draws them to the very place history is unfolding. That place is ever changing and for some in Budapest in 1990 the fear was that they were missing the real action that was happening in Prague. Hence the title. 

Phillips prose is razor sharp, witty, wry, energetic and self aware. His characters are people we have all had brief crossings with at the hippest of  times, when we lucked into an invitation to a cool party. He makes them real to us, showing us their motivations, their insecurities, their strengths and through them we can imagine ourselves that cool, imagine ourselves sipping drinks at the newest trend spot in the free world looking out at the bulwarks of history and the ravages of Soviet neglect.

Sweet lines like "If one refuses to see the truth, then one could hardly expect to be loved for one's blindness", are tossed easily and frequently throughout this fun read. I eagerly await Phillips next book and definitely recommend this one. This is a book meant for the beach of an aquamarine sea or a shady veranda in Havana's swelter. Enjoy.

"It is my belief that irony is the the tool of culture between creative high periods. It is the necessary fertilizer of the culture when it is (lying fallow)....American culture lies fallow now. There is nothing living, only things waiting. And the earth gives off only a smell. This smell, not pleasant, is irony. Very...self conscious.  ...It is the role now of your writers and thinkers in your culture to absorb what has come before, to filter the last good harvest, and to throw off the chaff, put in the bad smell irony everywhere  and wait for new seasons.

In the years between the great wars English colonialism had swept over the globe. Agnes Keith, a Californian, found herself married to an Englishman who was appointed as Agriculture Minister of a British holding called British East Borneo, now the state of Sabah in Malaysia on the island of Borneo. This book is a rare and thorough accounting of the small British society that ruled that remote outpost and of the amazing peoples and flora that inhabited it. It is priceless glimpse into a world as remote as any and at the same time as civilized as only the English can require. 

Keiths' sympathetic eye missed nothing and her stories are forceful  and vibrant. Her tales are of a life in Borneo before the winds of change caused the English to leave in the face of Japanese aggression. They are are filled with details of the daily comings and goings of native, political and mercantile peoples. A rare and delightful spy hole through time. 

"Adventure for me has three stages.  There is the first unshackled interval before starting when my dreams are bounded by nothing, north, south, east or west. There is the second interval when, footsore and insect bitten, aching backed and broken spirited, I wish that I had never come. And then comes the third interval - and in this interval I know that such adventures are the caviar of my existence compared to which other events in my life are schwarzbrot.  In this interval the fantastic, the unreal, the magnificent, and the unimaginable, which might have occurred only to other people, are occurring really to me. And then I know that it is right that such things must be paid for in discomfort, discouragement and weariness; I know that it is right that they are not free."

Every now and then the perfect book opens in the perfect place. I opened this remarkable book while sitting water level in a longboat cruising upriver on the Suneri Tenbeling River in Penang, Malaysia on the only route to Taman Negara, a remote national Park. Markham's memoir of her time spent as a bush pilot in British East Africa (now Kenya) in the early years of this century were all the more vibrant and imaginable under the circumstances. What stories, what personal profiles what incredible magic words and images she weaves of a time made of men and women larger than life in an environment made for superlatives. Don't take my word for it. Hemmingway wrote, "(she) can write rings around all of us who call ourselves writers." As I engulfed each page sweating in the equatorial drone of cicadas, the Muslim call to prayer  echoing from somewhere across the river and the strange chortling of some unfamiliar creature under my cabin floor I realized I was enjoying this book more than I have any in many, many years. Thanks to Pamela for recommending it. 

I like to pull a favorite passage from my favorite books and usually they are easy to identify as I bend the corners of pages I intend to return to. This poor book is all bent but I swear I could open to any page and astound you with Markham's gift for words. In fact, randomly:  "It was a world as old as time but as new as creations' hour had left it. In a sense it was formless. When the low stars shone over it and the moon clothed it in silver fog, it was the way the firmament must have been when the waters had gone and the night of the fifth day had fallen on creatures still bewildered by the wonder of their being."

As much as I appreciate the underlying thrust of Gaiman's story I was not completely impressed by his narrative or his occasionally blatant storyline. This is a a story of the war between the hundreds of gods brought to America's shores by hundreds of years of immigrants against the modern gods of technology, media and industry, etc.  His point of how gods come and go, how they are usurped by new gods, points to  man's need to believe. But one thinks that in almost 600 pages he could have made his point clearer and more concisely.  Never the less I enjoyed Gaiman's book if only because the subject matter is so important and the story desperately needs to be told and examined over and over so we may form as historically accurate a context in which to live our own lives and to judge the lives of others. I applaud Gaiman for his attempt if not for the final product. 

" "No man" proclaims Dante,"is an island" and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies. We are insulated (literally made into an island) from the tragedies of others, by our island nature, and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories.  We draw our lines around  these moment of pain, and remain upon our islands, and they cannot hurt us. They are covered with a smooth, nacreous layer to let them slip, pearl like, from our souls without real pain."

This was a nice book, easy to read, a simple story well told, cultural and informative. There is little not like about Helenga's first book. At the same time it was not a life changing book by any measure. This is a story of a woman's self discovery on the cusp of middle age. The setting is in Florence where our hero has gone to help restore book antiquities damaged in a flood. This rich environment is where she grapples with ideas of home and future and romance and work. Add a nice little story line and it becomes a quick enjoyable read. 

Perhaps it was the disjointed  way in which I read this little novel, a couple of pages at a time, that led me to be un amazed by it or perhaps it was simply unstartling. Never the less in spite of a nice writing style I finished the book with a bit of a ho hum feeling.  The story is of a successful Jewish man reflecting on his time during the war and revealing secrets to the family of an enemy he had killed in the South Pacific. It was enjoyable and easy enough to pick up but never really got me involved. 

Camus has crafted in this book an exploration into the heart and soul of the modern man and it is not necessarily a pretty picture. His talent in probing beneath the surface and laying bare the truth of the matter is evidenced in all his books but this one in particular is so sweeping in it's intent and so successful in it's indictment as to make it a clear classic. Each page found me probing my own soul for answers. Each page had me questioning the assumptions of the institutions I take for granted. Each page renewed my respect for the craft and the brave clarity of this gifted writer. 

"God is not needed to create guilt or to punish.  Our fellow men suffice, aided by ourselves. You were speaking of the Last Judgment.  Allow me to laugh respectfully. I shall wait for it resolutely, for I have known what is worse, the judgment of men."

This was a timely but difficult book dealing, as it does, with the death of a young woman at the hands of terrorists.  But the book is so well written that it was hard to put down and constantly made me feel like I was learning and growing from it.  It is the story of a father's attempts to recapture his life seven years after his daughter was killed by a random bombing in a train station in Italy. The author is enviably proficient in the classics, in language and customs and in cooking. It was a joy to read Hellenga's story and I definitely recommend it. 

 "Death, in fact, is a condition of meaning. Without it human beings, like the Greek gods, would make no significant choices, confront no limitations."

Harvey's story put into words that felt familiar things about place, about history and about human nature. It is nice to have it presented in a well thought out manner, even if without much interesting styling. The book tracks the path of a real life map thief through the worlds of art collectors, petty thieves and the known world as history filled in the unknown world. Interesting read. A little too much of the author.

John Henry was a steel driving man. Was he real or lore? Either way his story is the story of America's growth, it's confrontation with the advent of industrialization and the racism that built our infrastructure. Whitehead explores these issues as he weaves a story of exploration.  His writing is beautiful, using words like sharp tools. This is his second book. His first, The Intuitionist, was also unusual in story and craftsman-like in prose. A nice, easy read. Well worth it.

At one point Katharine Graham was pronounced the 19th most important person on the planet. Clearly this could be corroborated by the company she kept. Graham was friends with industry moguls and many US presidents and leaders of  countries across the globe. As owner of the Post and Newsweek and many other papers, TV stations and other media she was a power to be contended with. She was at the helm when the Pentagon papers were published and later when the Post broke the Watergate debacle. This biography is complete, honest, sincere and easy to read, in fact, hard to put down. It is an example that not all humans are equal, that the human experience can be an amazing adventure. Illuminating in it's candor of behind the scenes Washington politics. 

Right around the turn of the last century a cook in New York named Mary Malone was unknowingly killing off all her clients.  Mary was a carrier of typhoid fever. Very little was known about Typhoid, it's causes, or how it was spread. There certainly was no cure and no vaccine.  This book, written by a fellow chef, seeks to contextualize the media circus that unfolded around this unfortunate immigrant and put her life and time into perspective.  It almost works. The subject matter has all the ingredients for a fascinating story but Bourdain fails to make it interesting. Thankfully it's short. 

Stepping into 1980's Sri Lanka amidst the ravages of a country split between the guerillas, the government and the rebels is Anil Tissera.  Anil is a forensic anthropologist who is sent by a human rights organization to uncover the source of the murders ravaging her homeland.  Ondaatjes' prose is so beautiful, clear, concise, poignant. In spite of the horrific subject matter the book does not rely on shock or gruesome detail to deliver a message of history, love and identity. Another gem from one of my all time favorite authors. 

Almost a classic.  Hoff makes the case for Taoism by using the familiar Pooh stories and characters to illustrates his principles.  Works well enough but is definitely a light treatment.  Taoism for Dummies.   But then Taoists would like that wouldn't they?  A light treatment is as close to an empty mind as books get. 

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Eggers' first novel and will snap up anything else he writes. This is an account of a young man assuming the parenting responsibilities of his young brother after both parents die. Eggers is intense and his prose edits nothing from his stream of consciousness ramblings.  Normally this might seem too verbose but he has a brilliant mind and a crafted literary style that makes it so enjoyable to travel through this strange landscape with him. I was only a bit distressed by the note with which the book ends. Highly recommended. 

Wonderful book. Concise, clear writing, a remarkable tale about coming of age in Ethiopia in the era just after Heili Selassi is dethroned. This is a vivid but gentle account of his own and his countries struggle to move from the world of nomadic tribes and custom through the rigorous and corrupt control of the Catholic Church and into the dangerous world of education and western thought. His story is one of avoiding death from hunger, from warring tribes, nations and ideologies and the bereft blessings of Marxist/Leninist reality, from regular mass purging of suspected enemies of the state to his eventual placement at a University in the Netherlands. That he can bring us along with so much compassion and understanding is a gift he clearly exhibits in his writing. I loved the constant retelling of stories (fables actually) his mother told him a a child.

It is so refreshing to read a book that has references to the trades – to working people. This is a book written for men – or for women who want to understand men. It is an unapologetic collection of stories about the power women hold over men: spiritual and physical &the tumult this causes men as they are buffeted between worship and resentment. Gilb most certainly worships women. He does a good job of not objectifying them while not really telling their story either. His women are either Madonna’s or whores and his men Christ figures, born of flesh, uncertain how to proceed in the dialogue between their bodies and minds. Gilb offers no resolution only reflection and a careful storytellers’ account. Highly recommended.

Delightful book. A perfect beach read The narrative is so crisp and unburdened with prosaic deadweight. Story about a jazz trumpeter who falls out of the jazz world primarily because of his drug abuse. It is the story of his eventual redemption and renewed flirtation with the demons that fire his genius and his self-destructiveness at once. Main character’s redeeming virtue is his musical and golfing genius leaving a somewhat sympathetic supporting cast buffeted about without much gain. The constant thread of jazz throughout the book gives it a timing and a measured efficiency beginning to end. Fun, quick read.

David Brooks, in his cover story for The Atlantic, April 2000 says, "the male students are modern, enlightened men, sensitized since the first grade to apologize for their testosterone". So, listen, I’m sorry but I went into this book really hoping to find at least a bit of value in it but came out 480 long pages later almost angry. Set fifty years in the future the story is about a bunch of similar minded people taking over SanFrancisco, expelling those who don’t fit in and creating an "Eden" of sorts in a world despoiled by run amok technology. Theirs is a society fanatical in it’s embrace and dependence on spirituality primarily of the pagan variety. The confrontation with the armies from the evil south (yep, L.A.) are victorious only through unbelievable circumstance and finally magic. I see this as self love book written to appeal to women afraid of losing their sexual power over men. This great society is ruled solely by older women.All mentions of sex are written to favor a woman’s physiology and hormonal realities Also inter resting how all illumination, all redemption is arrived at by acquiescing to or coming to understand the rightness of a woman’s point of view. All this is masked in pagan worship of the earth which, because of it’s reverence for water and air and fire and earth is hard to argue with,and so makes for a very convenient vehicle. I like the reverence for the earth, the respect for the living (most of them), the fancy words about tolerance but it doesn't’t fool me. This book was not written for me or to convince me of anything. I can understand it’s appeal to someone else (certainly no men I know and few women) but it’s hard for me to take it seriously out of it’s limited context. Overly moralistic, self righteous, pedantic and unbelievable. Surely I set my hopes too high.

Some books give you a glimpse of a world that is happening right around you but you’re not really aware of. This book, as the name suggests, is a factual account of George------, a dope smuggler. George started with weed, flying it up from Mexico in the 60’s and eventually became an integral part of the Columbian Medein cartels’ transit infrastructure. Illuminating in its’ detail and fascinating in it’s larger than life main character I enjoyed the read. I especially liked the way the author set the world and national stage whenever circumstances changed for George. George made over 100million dollars starting with zero and ending with the same, .gardening in prison at the end. He was colorful, dynamic, full of flair and unable to know when to stop. We meet all the characters in his life including Pablo Escobar himself. This was an interesting book if you desire to step for a minute or two into another world existing simultaneously around us

I've given away so many copies of this book since I read it for the first time.  Best book I've discovered in years. It just hits home. So inspiring I had to go back and reread almost every page as I finished it. About religion, editing of world history, composition, examination of what we know and how we came to know it. Story line weaves through musings from the author and his conversations and relationships with the characters. My highest recommendation.

Story of the life of Mao's wife through the communist revolution, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural revolution.  Illuminating view into the power elite of China. very informative and well written.

Travel into another world, that of rural Tennessee in the 40's with the protagonist, a young carpenter with the grit to overcome an evil that has surrounded he and his family for years. Classic American Novel stuff in the style of Faulkner. Compelling and a bit haunting.

Set in modern day Shanghai this a murder mystery that sets the characters up to face not only the recent history of their culture but the realities of their own life.  Occasionally slow reading but intriguing in its detail of modern life in China. Good beach read.

Travel to North London and follow the lives of two families through the travails of their difficult environment, the rigors of ignorance, the promise and disillusionment of the children, the recurring hopes and dreams of each new generation.  A bit formula and contrived at times this novel definitely takes the reader to another place you may never know otherwise.