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By David Duhr, on December 19th, 2011 [As each year comes to a close, we ask our contributors to give us their picks of the best books that came out in the previous 12 months--and we let a few older ones slip in as honorable mentions. You can follow the entries through the rest of the year here, and check out the picks from 2009 and 2010 while you're at it.]
Pym, by Mat Johnson
 Pym is flat-out the funniest book I read this year. Mat Johnson turns Poe’s weirdest novel (actually, Poe’s only novel; but it’s weird as hell) on its head and mocks it to hilarious effect, all the while showing an unabashed love for the book and its writer.
Poe, as we all know, was a big-time racist honky, and nowhere does he prove that more than in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Want me to boil that novel down to four words? Okay. White good, black bad.
It’s hard to reduce Pym to as brief a snippet, but here’s the shortest manageable version: a black literature professor discovers that Poe’s novel might in fact be nonfiction, so he joins an expedition to Antarctica to find Poe’s “Tsalalians,” a black-skinned, black-toothed tribe living in monoracial isolation. Instead, the crew is kidnapped and forced into slavery by 7’-tall albino snow creatures. Meanwhile, civilization on the other six continents is crumbling due to some sort of unidentified Armageddon. And so on.
Pym is captivating, exciting, very, very funny, and almost as bizarre as the novel it plays off of. You can see my full review here. …
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By David Duhr, on August 22nd, 2011 [In this new series (idea copped from High Fidelity), our contributors put together a "top 5" list of books on a theme of their choosing. Read other entries in Top 5 Books here, and catch up on other fun series like this on our Special Features page.]
This recent (or, in Internet-time, ancient) piece on NPR.com got me to thinking not only about the many thousands of books I’ll never read, but also the hundreds of books I’ll probably never read again. Some of them because I’ve grown out of them (“Franklin W. Dixon’s” Hardy Boys, any Dean Koontz or Tom Clancy barf I’ve ever lapped up); most of them because they left no impression (Forgotten Title by Uninspiring Writer); and a wonderful few that I won’t read again because, assuming I continue to smoke, I have, at best, 30-35 more good years of reading in me and so much new writing still to discover.
It would be easy to write a post about the top 5 books I’ll never read again because they were garbage, but that’s the kind of thing that belongs in Junk Novel Roulette. (My contribution to which I am heavily overdue on. Oh Diane Mott Davidson, how I long for the day I have time and appetite enough to devour your “culinary thriller” The Cereal Murders.)
Instead this is a post about five wonderful, masterful books I will never read again. The full title should be The Top 4 Books I’ll Never Read Again (Despite the Fact That I’d Love To) Because They’re So Goddamn Involved and Time-Consuming, and the Top Book I’ll Never Read Again Because I Don’t Want to Die of Self-Inflicted Head Trauma.
Top 5 Great Books I’ll Never Read Again
 5. David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens
I’m a sucker for any book with my name in the title. I’m also a sucker for any book that’s just flat-out excellent and beautifully written. This is the most autobiographical of Dickens’ novels, a bildungsroman that takes us through the childhood and into the adult life of David (a.k.a. Doady, Daisy, Trot), along the way introducing us to memorable characters like Uriah Heep, Wilkins Micawber, and Agnes Wickfield.
David Copperfield was released in serial form, like much of Dickens’ other work, and so it’s really, really, really long (most unabridged versions run upwards of 800 pages). I have so much Dickens still to read and so little time. Sorry, my Dickensian namesake, but we shall never meet again.
Besides, you’d just make all the same mistakes the second time through.
…
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By David Duhr, on August 2nd, 2011  Author: Donald Ray Pollock
2011, Doubleday
Filed under: Literary
Get this book
| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
7 |
| Entertainment..... |
8 |
| Depth..... |
6 |
Early on in The Devil All the Time, Willard Russell tells his nine-year-old son Arvin that “They’s a lot of no-good sonafabitches out there.” When Arvin asks if there are more than one hundred, Willard chuckles and says, “Yeah, at least that many.”
Most of them can be found in this book. Any reader hoping that Donald Ray Pollock would branch out in his debut novel and leave behind the gloomy scum of Knockemstiff ought not to read even the very first line, which begins “On a dismal morning” and ends in “a long and rocky holler in southern Ohio called Knockemstiff.”
But for those of us who enjoyed Pollock’s story collection, The Devil All the Time is more—lots more—of the same degenerate goodness, revolving around characters who have been “born just so they could be buried.” …
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By David Duhr, on April 18th, 2011 [Deserted Isle Books is our new series in which our contributors discuss the one book they would choose if they were, well, stranded alone on a deserted isle forever. Read other installments of the series here, get your own copies at Powell's, and explore other series like this on our Special Features page.]
Were I to leave tomorrow on some sort of ocean voyage, I would take along Mat Johnson’s Pym, the book I’m currently balls-deep in, since it would be the only book in my luggage. And it seems an appropriate choice for a high-seas adventure, as Pym is a satirical response to Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, a novel about a whaling ship stowaway who gets shipwrecked.
But choosing the book I’m reading now doesn’t keep with the spirit of this idea. And although I’m not the type to pack for an ocean voyage expecting to end up stranded on a deserted isle, I’m always willing to fantasize for (and about?) the dudes here at C4.
I’m tempted to choose a thick, engrossing, thriller-type novel. Stephen King’s The Stand and Dean Koontz’s Strangers jump immediately to mind. I haven’t read either since the mid-90s, but remember being totally consumed by both.
The question is, for how long will I be stranded? If I’m going to be rescued in a week or two, the King or Koontz would be a good pick; the kind of time-passing stories that would help me escape reality. But if I’m stranded for the rest of my life, how long would it take for me to get sick of these books? Both writers do a fair job of character development, but in essence they’re both plot-driven. And how many times can you read the same plot before growing weary of it? By the third read I’d be thinking, “Okay, I get it, Koontz/King. Supervirus, aliens, Nevada, good vs. evil. Now I shall use your book to wipe my ass, because these coconut husks just ain’t cuttin’ it. (Or, actually, these coconut husks are cutting it).” …
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By David Duhr, on November 22nd, 2010 
[Follow this series here. We're also compiling all our best books in one easy-to-browse page; find it by clicking the stamp, at left or anywhere else you see it on the site. That page will get updated as each new post comes out.]
I read about fifteen novels for every nonfiction title, but out of the 2010 books I read, it was two nonfiction titles that stole the show. So in slow-tease style, I’m starting with the novels.
Next, by James Hynes
I read Next just before moving to Austin, and not only did it paint for me an accurate depiction of my new city, it’s also a hell of a good novel. And funny, to boot. Kevin Quinn is a mid-level editor in Ann Arbor who flies down to Austin for a job interview without telling his maybe-pregnant girlfriend. Planted firmly in mid-life crisis mode and full of an impending sense of doom, Kevin follows an attractive young Asian girl (whom he dubs “Joy Luck”) around the city. While doing so, he reflects on his life in Michigan. This book contains two striking passages—what is probably the best sex scene I’ve ever read, and an ending so stunning and unsettling that to even hint at its contents would be sinful. Let’s just say, this writer has some heavy balls. …
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By David Duhr, on October 19th, 2010  My uncle Jerry is better known in the family as Bubba Duck or Bubs, due to his spot-on Donald Duck impression. He has been a writer for as long as I can remember, and earlier this year Night Train to Moline became the first manuscript of his available for exchange on the free market.
At its core is the fictional Reverend Bobby Floy, Christian Fundamentalist and host of the Gospel Radio Hour, broadcasting from Chattanooga. Floy and his show have such a devoted following that Gospel Times Publishing has decided to compile a “Best of: 2006-2010″ retrospective. After a brief intro from the fictional publisher, the rest of the novel is comprised of calls from listeners and increasingly-bizarre responses from the good Reverend.
Recently my uncle and I chatted via email about Night Train, his writing background and process, and his forthcoming book When Hell Freezes Over. As most of our conversations do, this one danced the line between serious and inappropriate.
Q. Where to begin, Bubs? I guess let’s start with this Night Train book, since it’s the reason we’re doing this. Tell us a bit about the origins of the book and the good Reverend Bobby Floy.
A. Night Train to Moline was originally written as an escape from another manuscript I was working on titled When Hell Freezes Over. Hell is also a work of fiction; however, the humor is very dark and the main character (Legion) is especially sinister and devious. After working on it for several days I decided I needed/wanted a break from the sinister darkness of Legion … so I created Pastor Bobby Floy as an interesting, enjoyable escape. I wanted the humor with Pastor Bob to be goofy, lighthearted, and ribald. In other words, the exact opposite of When Hell Freezes Over. So that’s the origin (and reason) for Night Train.
At the time I had no intentions of trying to market Night Train … it was just something I wrote to appeal to my own sick humor. I wanted Pastor Bob to make me laugh, and didn’t initially write him to make other people laugh. The idea of marketing the manuscript came much later in the process. …
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By David Duhr, on September 16th, 2010   Author: Louis Gallo
2010, Createspace
Filed under: Poetry
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
7 |
| Entertainment..... |
7 |
| Depth..... |
6 |
In a recent interview, Lou Gallo told me that nostalgia is a disease and that he is a “complete, woebegone nostalgician.” He may as well have told me that the sky is blue, for I’d already read two of his new poetry collections.
Halloween and Omens are both so thick with the past that the idea of a year 2010 once again becomes the stuff of futuristic sci-fi. These poems takes the reader into Gallo’s New Orleans childhood of the ’50s, into his wilder ’60s and ’70s, and dip their toes into the ’90s, but rarely do they venture into present day. Which is for the best, because Gallo is a born storyteller, an unabashed sentimentalist who moves forward only by looking back. …
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By David Duhr, on September 7th, 2010 Author: Tao Lin
 2010, Melville House
Filed Under: Literary
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
6 |
| Entertainment..... |
6 |
| Depth..... |
5 |
Three things helped me fight the urge to employ Tao Lin’s style in reviewing this book:
- I’d likely have ended up with an incredibly dull and unimaginative piece of writing
- Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and I feel no need to flatter Tao Lin
- Tao Lin imitators (“Linitators” —mine, I think) have sprung up all over the Internet, and all of them suck. This is because nobody can truly capture Tao Lin’s style. Except Tao Lin.
Richard Yates is, at its core, a romcom for the digital native crowd, delivered to us through Gchat, email, text, cell phone and, in an inspired move, by sometimes actually putting the lovers together in the same place. The lovers are 22-year-old Haley Joel Osment (not the cloying actor, but an NYU grad who writes poetry, shoplifts what he needs, and sometimes thinks “about the next three to eight years of his life,” often while wearing “a neutral facial expression”) and 16-year-old Dakota Fanning (not the cloying actor, but a Jersey girl who works at McDonald’s and looks at people with “a sad facial expression,” or sometimes with “a concerned facial expression”). The book’s tagline reads “What constitutes illicit sex for a generation with no rules?”—but don’t expect much to be made of the fact that Dakota Fanning (the characters are always referred to by their full names) is underage. It’s an odd tagline, really—Lin is so deft at making the relationship seem perfectly acceptable that, outside of the occasional reference to the cops, the reader forgets that the young couple is breaking the law.
So, if not a racy Lolita-type narrative, what should the reader expect? Well, if you’ve read Tao Lin before, you already know what to expect—a lot of this: …
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By David Duhr, on August 9th, 2010 [A new entry in our "I Loved This Book When..." series will appear every Monday this summer. To keep up with this series or any other, check out our Special Features page.]
 What follows is a sentence that nobody has written before, ever*:
Every time I hear Richard Marx’s “Right Here Waiting,” I think of Johnny Tremain.
When first presented with the phrase “I loved this book when,” my mind went straight to childhood. (As it usually does, being a not-ready-for-primetime adult.) I read a ton as a kid—the complete Hardy Boys, about 40% of Matt Christopher’s (100+) sports novels, the occasional Sweet Valley High, when I became curious about girls. But when I think of childhood books, Johnny Tremain marches straight to the front.
I reread it last week, and from the very first line—“On rocky islands gulls woke”—I knew this post would be based on a false premise: that I loved this book only at a specific time in my life. It’s just not true. I loved it as a child, I love it now, and I will always love it. In fact, if I hadn’t read Johnny Tremain, my life would probably look a lot different than it does now. …
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By David Duhr, on August 3rd, 2010  Author: Adam Schwartzman
2010, Pantheon
Filed under: Literary
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
8 |
| Entertainment..... |
6 |
| Depth..... |
6 |
Eddie Signwriter is one of those books you might read for the journey, not the destination. With 293 very tall, very texty pages, it’s quite a bit longer than the page count suggests, and the final payoff, I’m afraid, isn’t quite worth the effort. But much of the language here is lovely. Schwartzman is a poet taking his first turn at a novel, and if you’re able to look past his issues with pacing and theme, you’ll find plenty of passages worth rereading.
Ghanaian teenager Kwasi Edward Michael Dankwa begins an innocent affair with a classmate that, for reasons mostly beyond his control, leads to the death of his girlfriend’s aunt, a respected businesswoman. Eddie is kicked out of school and more or less banished from the town. He wanders for a bit, moves in with an uncle, becomes a signwriter (he paints signs and storefronts for local businesses), then disappears himself from Ghana without a word. The narrative takes us from Ghana to Botswana and back, through Senegal and finally into France.
Sounds like a flurry of activity, right? It is not. The narrative moves along at a snail’s pace. Eddie just kinda bobs along from place to place, and we bob next to him. Worse yet, the big picture never really comes together. …
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