I’m not much of a fan of re-reading, possibly because, as a holdover from childhood, I tend to read for story. Once I’ve heard it, I’ve heard it. So I was surprised, while writing this post, to realize there are books I do find myself revisiting from time to time. Which, over a span of 50 reading years, is getting to be an awful lot of times. Mostly they’re collections of stories and poems. It’s as if the musical part of my writing brain has struck a deal with the bossy narrative part. OK, you got your story. So now can I hear it again, just for the music? And like half of a long-married couple, the impatient, let’s-get-on-with-it narrative side says, Oh alright. Wake me when you’re done.
Here, then, are the top five books I never get tired of.
1. Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth
I was a kid in 1960 when the 26-year-old Roth won the National Book Award for this collection, his debut. At the time, I wasn’t old enough to appreciate the contents, but when I devoured these stories in high school, lifting the book off a readerly aunt’s shelf, they knocked my knee socks off. Last year, I taught selections to a crop of students who’d never read Roth. How great to see their socks get knocked off too. … Continue reading »
The Keeper of Lost Causes is the first English-translated book in Jussi Adler-Olsen’s bestselling Danish crime series, about the unique Department Q. It stars Carl Morck, who’s one of Copenhagen’s best detectives… until he falls into an ambush and watches his partner crippled and another cop killed.
Morck is deeply traumatized by the incident, and his passion for detective work vanishes. Since his superiors can’t fire him without starting a union battle, they devise a plan to stash Morck away by creating a new department for high-profile cold cases, Department Q. Morck’s assignment to Q is technically a promotion, which appeases the police union, but really it’s a way to put Morck on ice. Nobody will care if the traumatized detective never solves one of the years-old crimes assigned to him, so it’s the perfect place for him to recuperate (i.e. not work very hard). Meanwhile, the bosses can route most of the government money earmarked for Dept. Q to their underfunded homicide division.
Morck, for his part, is more than happy to sit around staring at the covers of case files. Until, that is, he runs across an interesting case and his curiosity drags him back into an investigation. Keeper follows that investigation as a straightforward, quite entertaining police procedural. … Continue reading »
For whatever reason, I’ve never really been into mystery novels. But after unexpectedly finding a lot of enjoyment in No Rest for the Dead, I wanted to ride the wave a little longer and figured I ought to hit some of the classics. I opted to hold off on Sir Doyle (A Study in Scarlet is in my short pile), and go for the more gumshoe-y cred of Dashiell Hammett. I wanted something that I would be totally ignorant of, so The Maltese Falcon was out–I love the film. The Thin Man, though it doesn’t have any written sequels, spawned a very popular series of films (that have been languishing in my Netflix–Qwikster?–queue for ages), and seemed to have a strong following of fans on the internet. So I went to library and snagged a copy. … Continue reading »
[At the end of each month, Aaron surveys the comics he read, celebrates the best, considers the rest, and takes stock of what it means to be a contemporary comic fan. Follow "The State of My Pull List" here.]
[Note: this month's Pull List is mondo-big, so it'll be broken up into three pieces. Here's the second part. Here's part one.]
Solid Reads
Secret Avengers #16
With Secret Avengers #16 Warren Ellis once again smuggles a sharp critique of superheroes inside of a frothy, expertly crafted adventure story (see also Astonishing X-Men: Xenogenesis, my Spotlight pick for February 2011) Ellis makes the most of the Secret Avengers concept, telling a story that’s relatively quiet and takes place in an abandoned city several miles underground – Captain America and his team (Beast, who Ellis portrays as a neurotic, motor-mouth nerd, plus Moon Knight, and Black Widow) infiltrate the facility, drive around in a nuclear-powered Cadillac, and stop the bad guys (a classic faceless evil organization) from teleporting Cincinnati off the face of the planet. That quiet, offbeat tone is complemented by artist Jamie McKelvie’s backgrounds, which are starkly beautiful in a Michelangelo Antonioni sort of way—his double-page spread of Moon Knight soaring over the empty cityscape is breathtaking. Of course, McKelvie is equally adept at framing exciting action sequences, most of which are packed into the final third of the issue. Ellis saves the didacticism for the very end—it’s devastating, so I won’t give it away here—Beast’s notes of regret just make it all the more compelling. Apparently Secret Avengers is just going to be one-and-done stories by Ellis and a rotation of artists—I’d be happier with more from McKelvie every month, but I’m on board regardless. … Continue reading »
Not that I buy into them, but pseudo-documentaries like the kind often played on The History Channel are a guilty pleasure of mine. Sitchin’s books (there are many) were mentioned in one I’ve been watching recently called “Ancient Aliens.” That show’s title pretty much sums up Sitchin’s thesis: aliens used to live on earth, and live amongst humans as gods.
Sitchin’s clearly a smart guy. He reads multiple languages (including Sumerian), and has spent a lot of time studying ancient artifacts. His basic supposition is that if Homer’s Troy (long thought by scholars to be a mythical place, until its excavation around the turn of the 20th century) can transcend myth, there’s no reason to outright discredit the rest of his rendition as untrue just because we don’t believe it. Hence there were really gods and demigods involved in the politics of men. … Continue reading »
If ever a wildly popular “literary” phenomenon needed a firm pantsing, it’s Stieg Larsson’s Dragon-Tattoo-Girl series (also: Twilight). Larsson’s awful writing manages to be both clumsy and long-winded, and his cardboard characters make Michele Bachmann look like a master of nuance. It’s very bad novelling, made worse by its stunning popularity. Enter Lars Arffssen and The Girl with the Sturgeon Tattoo, a send-up about “Lizzy Salamander” and “a psychopathic serial killer who’s probably also a world-class surgeon … or an experienced samurai warrior.” Those two may or may not be the same person. It’s a shame that Owchar comes at this from the point of a Larsson fan; he doesn’t seem to get, for instance, Arffssen’s best joke. “At 200 pages,” Owchar writes, Sturgeon “is about 150 pages too long.” If that’s not Larsson-esque, I don’t know what is. [Get this book]
King of the Badgers, by Philip Hensher, reviewed by Katherine A. Powers (B&N Review)
I found Hensher’s last book to be beautiful, exquisitely written, and utterly devoid of compelling drama. This time around, the British Jonathan Franzen (trademark pending) centers his story around the disappearance of a child in a quaint seaside arts-and-crafts village. Sounds like he’s tried to put together a compelling plot, and if it’s a success (a point on which Powers never quite draws up a verdict), this could be a fantastic read. Hensher is, in non-plot-related ways, one of the most immensely skilled living novelists I’ve ever read. [Get this book]
Survivors, by Richard Fortey, reviewed by Colin Tudge (Guardian)
Horseshoe crabs, oddly enough, are over 450 million years old, which means they survived the Permian mass extinction, the largest extinction event ever on Earth, which killed 96% of marine species of life. This book is a naturalist’s quantification of such “survivors,” mixed with a first-hand account of how these species are getting on today. [Unfortunately, not yet available in U.S.]
A Man of Parts, by David Lodge, reviewed by Christopher Benfey (New York Times)
This latest novel by two-time Booker finalist David Lodge appropriates the life of H.G. Wells, the stupefyingly prolific writer who created The Time Machine and War of the Worlds. Wells was equally prolific sexually, and he believed that sex was a recreation “like tennis or badminton.” I can’t say for sure if I like the sound of the book itself, but the review is interesting for its life-of-eccentric-genius details. [Get this book]
In seven longer-than-average short stories, Stuart Nadler takes on fathers and sons, lovers and ex-lovers, philandering philanderers, sibling rivalries, and orphans of all ages. These stories are expansive, opening landscapes of regret and redemption all along the Northeast Corridor. Each one boasts moments of hard-earned clarity rendered with a degree of precision that made me pause to admire their craftsmanship, craftsmanship I found all the more impressive for the complexity of the stories themselves.
While Nadler’s prose is simple and direct, the tales he tells tend to distort conventional relationships almost beyond recognition. In one, a girlfriend hires a surrogate temptress to test her boyfriend. In another, a man, his lover, her husband, and their children all add up to something like a family. In other hands, setups like these could easily descend into melodrama; in Nadler’s hands the result is something much less predictable and much more memorable. … Continue reading »
[At the end of each month, Aaron surveys the comics he read, celebrates the best, considers the rest, and takes stock of what it means to be a contemporary comic fan. Follow "The State of My Pull List" here.]
Note: this month’s Pull List is mondo-big, so it’ll be broken up into three pieces. Here’s the first part.
Spotlight
Back in March when I first wrote about Xombi, I noted that the title’s future was uncertain at best, given the state of the market and the limited readership for an oddball sci-fi/adventure title. Six months later, it turns out my suspicions were correct—Xombi #6 marks the end of the series. I’ll always want more, but if Xombi has to end, I’m glad it ended like this.
Writer John Rozum gives all of the major characters their spotlight moment in the final battle against Finch; Catholic Girl fights off a squad of flying monocular robots, Nun the Less sabotages the Ninth Stronghold’s defenses, Julian fights off a trio of blood mummies. Naturally, David and Annie get the most glory as they outsmart Finch (thanks in part to a literal pearl of wisdom – Rozum clearly enjoys working wordplay into the fabric of his story’s world) and restore the stronghold to its original state. Rozum brings the various plot threads together neatly, which wouldn’t be much of an accomplishment for a six-issue series, except that every one has been packed with characters and concepts. Rozum can’t help himself even in the final issue, introducing monstrous adversaries like the Blood Mummies (female mummies with both internal and external circulatory systems who are covered in silk bandages created by the spiders that constantly patrol their bodies and wield weapons that change based on the phase of the moon) and Dental Phantoms. As much as I’ll miss the characters, I’ll miss Rozum’s wit and inventiveness even more.
That said, the real strength of this issue is not the humor or the resolution of the invasion plot, but rather the completion of David’s emotional arc. When the series began David was struggling with his place in the world, having recently become the Xombi. In issue six, presented with an opportunity to live with a beautiful girl in a perfect world among other people who will age just as slowly as he will, David opts instead to stay on Earth with his friends, to cope with his difference rather than hide from his fate. The sequence is rendered beautifully—artist Frazer Irving again makes use of floating heads for extended dialogue, relying on facial expressions alone to sell Annie’s disappointment and David’s brief moment of doubt before saying goodbye.
Thanks to Irving, Xombi is easily one of the best looking books of the year. His frames glow with otherworldly color, and his framing frequently breaks out of the standard grid approach, appropriate for the rich, unusual world the characters live in. Irving strikes a delicate balance between a kind of cartoonish expressionism and realistic detail, making the wildest of Rozum’s ideas seem plausible. I don’t always need, or even want, my comics to look real, but I enjoy the playful tension in Irving’s possible/impossible approach.
As far as we know, there’s no future for Xombi in the DC relaunch. But given the company’s new interest in non-superhero titles, there’s at least a chance that the publisher will bring Rozum and Irving together again. If not, then at least we have six issues worth of storytelling that was never once missed its mark.
[In this feature, we highlight a handful of the best book reviews appearing over the weekend in major newspapers. Follow it here.]
The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern. Reviewed by Olivia Laing (Guardian).
This book’s been on my radar for a while (and, in fact, Nico included it in his most recent Book Radar post). But after this review I’m not so gung-ho. I’ll readily admit that I often choose books based solely on their covers. So it’s especially disheartening that Laing addresses people like me, who saw pictures of Night Circus and were intrigued, in the open of her piece. This is a story about a circus, in a world imbued with real magic. Laing found a lot to like in the world and aesthetic, but a lot lacking in the story itself. I’ll still read this, but it just got knocked back a few pegs in my anticipation list.
The Sibling Effect, by Jeffery Kluger. Reviewed by Wray Herbert (Washington Post).
Right off the bat, this book (and review) gets bonus points for mentioning the hoopoe–my favorite bird that I’ve never seen. That has nothing to do with anything though, since Kluger’s book explores the relationship between (human) siblings through a lens of his own past. Although his sounds like a good, if emotionally difficult, story, I’m a little more interested in the science Kluger has to share. Unfortunately, as Herbert describes it, I’ll be left wanting. Oh well. Pop-science fans and people who want to dig deeper into the love/hate of their siblings, give it a go.
You Deserve Nothing, by Alexander Maksik. Reviewed by Adam Langer (New York Times).
Part Glee, part Camus’ The Stranger? I don’t know if I want to gag or read this immediately. This is a story about that cool teacher we all had in high school who was just chummy enough with the teenage girls to be creepy. Maksik’s teacher (at an American school in France) steps over that line, however, and gets into a sexual relationship with a student. I like that this is a review of such a book that doesn’t draw a direct line to Lolita (as now I have just done…), but the Camus stuff sounds a little weird:
Early on Mr. Maksik’s echoes of Camus are faint, but later, when he paraphrases and quotes directly from “The Stranger,” the parallels between Will and Meursault become nearly impossible to ignore. The novelist is not only modernizing “The Stranger” but demonstrating its enduring relevance, which has made it an influential text for everybody from George W. Bush…to the Cure.
Quick Highlights (super-dark, bad joke edition): Some people would rather jump in front of a van than read a biography of Socrates–I’ll read the book. I’d personally pick the van over reading this book of dog essays, though. The guy who got rich making John Travolta baby voiceover movies in Hollywood actually did get creamed by a van, but it wasn’t on purpose.
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Bonus Book Trailer: So much flannel and slo-mo jogging… I’ll send a paperback copy of the C4 Anthology to anyone who can make up a description for Ladybird, Ladybird that doesn’t sound like the steaming pile this promises to be.
[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.]
Like Eric, I try to read before I go to sleep most nights. Most books are good sleep aids, because they let you focus mind on something concrete but unabsorbing, and because a lot of them are quite boring.
But a precious few run the opposite way, they grab you immediately and are so relentlessly riveting that they don’t let you sleep. Often these are not thrillers or even traditional “page-turners,” and neither are they necessarily literary masterpieces. Instead, they are simply ripping good stories. These are the kinds of books I think of when I think of “classics.”
So, without further ado, here are the
Top Five Books That Kept Me Up All Night
5. The Giver, by Lois Lowry
I read this book for the first time just a few weeks ago, convinced by coworkers who were shocked that I hadn’t read it in grade school. I started it at midnight, and didn’t stop until I’d finished the last page. Granted, it’s not a long book (it took me about two hours to read cover to cover), but it’s a classic tale that inspired a whole host of knockoffs and imitators, the worst and most notable being M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village. The Giver tells of a “perfect” society in which everyone is assigned a job and nobody ever leaves by choice. When Jonas turns 13, he’s assigned the job of Receiver, a supposedly illustrious job through which Jonas learns the dark secrets of the society’s supposedly utopian existence. It’s a simply, powerfully told story, an elegant execution of a familiar archetype. … Continue reading »
1. Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth 
