Book #36: The Odd Sea, by Frederick Reiken

The Odd Sea won the Hackney Literary Award for a first novel. I mention this for two reasons: one, to let you know that other people more important than me thought highly of it; and two, because it makes me think of hack writers, which amuses me. Congratulations, you’re King of the Hacks!*

The book is about the years following the disappearance of the narrator’s older brother and the efforts to find out what happened to him and rescue him from his Schrodinger's Cat status. It explores the effects of the disappearance on, well, mainly the narrator since he’s the one telling the story and all, but also the family members as individuals and a unit, the brother’s girlfriend, and the brother’s teacher. Reiken uses clear, spare language, and does not turn the story into a melodrama, into which it easily could’ve spiraled in another author’s hands. It actually had somewhat of the opposite problem. Since emotions were always presented in such a straightforward manner, I always felt a level of detachment from the story and the characters. I also had some issues with the narrator's voice. He often seemed to be too adult, or flat-out weird. (Describing his sister as bosomy? At thirteen? Awwwwkward.).

For a book with the constant threat of death, torture, and child molestation hanging over it, it was surprisingly pleasant. Like walking through a forest on a sunny day and happening upon a dead moose - you’re just so relaxed that you can acknowledge death’s existence without having your mood be affected by it. (I don’t think moose actually live in forests, but you get the point.) The comparison became even more fitting when I saw that Reiken is a nature writer. There are a lot of descriptions of leaves, and forests, and the sky, and I usually wouldn’t care much for that, but everything was just too darn pleasant for me to get bored or upset. He’s also a reporter, which could help explain the detachment.

There was one part, though, where I got seriously stirred up. A speech the father makes at his timber frame raising got me choked up a little. I was over it by the time he made a similar speech again at the end of the book.

I can see how someone who is drawn to serious explorations like this would enjoy it, and I can see why it would get some first-time-novel praise. It doesn’t just show promise, it delivers on some of it already. This isn’t the type of thing to which I’m drawn, though, so I won’t be holding my breath for his next novel.

Time for another round of Quote That's Better Isolated And Dirty: On one full-moon night we sat out watching beavers until dawn... The beavers seemed not to mind our presence, yet for some reason this made me feel invisible, and afraid.

*That’s not really what the award means. I think.

Book #30: Captain Freedom, by G. Xavier Robillard

(Three book reviews in two days? What did you ever do to be so blessed?)

Captain Freedom is by no means a perfect book, as someone else’s review on Pajiba plentifully pointed out. There are some confusing timeline issues, it’s shallow, uses a lot of cheap, pop-culture-y jokes, and the writing itself isn’t too polished. Despite all that, I enjoyed it and laughed out loud often. Timing no doubt played a big part, since this was the first book I read after completing the 5K. Rushing through 5.5 books in something like 10 days made me appreciate something mildly stupid that I could easily fly through. I also started it on the first gorgeous, hot day of spring, and reading outside in the sunshine always makes me happy, no matter what I’m reading.

So, yeah. If you like stupid-funny, I guess I'd recommend this. Otherwise, back the hell up.

Book #35: Hogfather, by Terry Pratchett

(I have a gigantic backlog of reviews, so I’m going to try to bang out as many as possible over the next few days. Quality is not expected. Not that it ever is around here.)

There isn’t much left for me to say about Pratchett. Hogfather is another one of his Discworld books, and while it certainly wasn’t the worst of them that I’ve read, it didn’t come close to being my favorite. It’s routinely mentioned as one of his best, but I doubt it helped that I read it immediately after Small Gods, which was uh-mazing and will hopefully get a real review. The Hogfather is an alternate-universe Santa Claus who uses pigs instead of reindeer and who gets kidnapped, or exiled from reality, or something I can’t explain well but will make sense while you’re reading it. The book concerns the efforts of Death and Co. to rescue him, as well as the bad guys’ attempts to keep him whatever/wherever the hell he is.

There are a lot of funny moments, the plot made me want to keep reading to find out what the heck was going on, and the ending was great. I didn’t really care for the main character, Susan, though. I’m sure she’s a nice girl and a wonderful au pair, but she was saddled with an “I am obligated to do this even though I desperately do not want to” storyline, which made her kind of a killjoy. She also was surprisingly slow in some areas--despite her own relatively extensive experience with the odd and supernatural, no matter how many times she was reminded that the God of Hangovers had zero experience in the human world (long story), she kept being shocked when he asked questions about it. Keep up, Suze, he’s new here! Sheesh.

I was thrilled to read a story in which Death played a major role, though. He’s one of my favorite Pratchett characters, and up until now he’s only had pop-in roles. This story allowed his many dimensions to be shown-he’s funny, tragic, and charmingly awkward in his attempts to emulate humanness. Honestly, by the end of Hogfather you kind of want to give him a hug and lie to him it's all going to be OK.

Book #38: Nine Stories, by J.D. Salinger

J.D., you goddamn son of a bitch. I give you one last chance. One chance to really impress me, and what happens? You actually do. The short story format forced you to cut down on all the endless philosophical blather that got tiring in Franny and Zooey and focus on the aspect of your writing that I enjoyed the most in Catcher, i.e., the character sketches.

The story everyone raves about, "A Perfect Day for a Bananafish," starts off the collection, and it's charming, disturbing, playful, and shocking. The last couple of paragraphs in particular are tense and full of anticipation-at least, I imagine they would be, if my stupid eyes hadn't automatically jumped to the end of the last page, ruining any chance of being surprised. What's worse is that I had forgotten I'd picked up Nine Stories in high school and immediately put it down after the first story because I'd done the exact same thing and wanted to forget the ending so I could be surprised the next time I read it.

After that, my favorite stories were "The Laughing Man" and "De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period," the latter of which is written by a man reflecting on his teenaged pretension and is pretty fucking hilarious. "The Laughing Man" has a cool, intertwined double storyline, one a Scheherazade-style action-adventure tale that a character is narrating within the story, and the other centering around both that character's love life and the main narrator's childlike understanding of and reaction to that love life.

Most of the other stories were intriguing and kept me interested and thinking. Then I got to "Teddy." You were so close, Salinger, and you had to go and throw in a wunderkind who's just soooo spiritual and monologues about life and meaning and reincarnation all over the place. Overall, though, good show, old chap.

(Review #37, for Murder on the Orient Express, is almost done.)

Use the pink, fuzzy handcuffs, Officer Krasinski

I'm glad drunk and disorderly laws have higher requirements than what I did Friday night. It was five AM, and four of us were looking for the subway after some late-night pizza. We passed a group of cops walking the other way, and one girl asked them where the nearest train was. A short, cute cop stopped and asked where we were trying to go.

Girl: Greenpoint.
Me: Astoria.
Cop: Oh, you're going to Astoria? I'm going there in about 20 minutes, do you want a ride?
Me, overjoyed: Really?!
Cop, sneering: No.
Me: What the fuck. You know, this is why cops have reputations as assholes.
Girl, in a loud aside to me: He's so cute!
Me, also loudly: Are you kidding? He is NOT cute. [I faced him] You are not cute.
Girl, turning back to the cop: Do you know what street the F is on?
Cop: Yeah, yeah, it's on the corner of Fuck Off and Find It Yourself.
Me, taking an angry step toward him: FUCK YOU. You are such a FUCKING DOUCHEBAG.
He laughed and walked away. The girl was grinning widely and squealed, "He was Irish! I could tell!"
Me: No wonder he was such a fucking asshole.

I also think I hugged John Krasinski. Note that this does not mean I actually did, just that I really want to think I did. I was sitting by the register at the pizza place when two men walked in. I commented loudly on how one looked incredibly like John Krasinski. The girl who would later fall in love in Asshole Cop agreed with me. That was all the encouragement I needed to start my own love connection. I raised my arm and tried to snap my fingers, failed, then called out, "Hey, blond dude!" He turned. "Have you ever gotten that you look like John Krasinski?" He started laughing, then confirmed he had. That's when I busted out my curveball: Ever gotten Aaron Eckhart? BAM! Hit him with a new one.

They sat down at the table next to ours, Aaron Krasinski facing me. And face me he did. Every time I looked up, he was grinning at me, occasionally giving me these cute eyebrow-raised smirks, with an expression on his face like he was waiting for me to do something. In my egotistical drunken state, I assumed he was simply taken with my excessive adorability. Or my excessive cleavage. (Don't judge, it was party night.) I asked if I could call him Aaron. I could. My friends laughed at me, and Aaron and I bonded over their jealousy over our true love.* I gave his friend, Aaron Jr., my leftover pizza, they got up to leave, and I jumped up to hug him goodbye.

I got home and decided to see if John Krasinski was in New York right now. I knew it wasn't actually him, but a girl can dream, right? I ended up on Gawker Stalker, and it turns out he lives in that area, and all of the recent sightings of him have been within a 3-block radius of that pizza place. COINCIDENCE? Or me missing the chance to make Jim Halpert my boyfriend, or at least be able to brag to everyone I ever met that this happened to me?

Now, logically, I know if it really was him, he wouldn't be joking about falling in love with some drunk chick at a pizza place at 5 in the morning. But on the other hand, it was him and there is no other explanation. He kept doing the smirky Jim face, and what if he was trying to get me to realize it actually was him? You know how those Hollywood types get when they go too long without public recognition and worship.

So that's how I've been spending the remainder of my weekend. Slowly convincing myself that I had a glorious encounter with a celebrity and didn't even realize it until it was too late. At least if this dream is shattered, I'll always have my gyno run-in with Amy Ryan with which to comfort my soul.

*Sample dialogue: "How could we not? Such a perfect setting."
"Romantic lighting..."
"Exquisite cuisine."

Books #35 and 36: Hogfather and The Odd Sea

I finished Hogfather, another Pratchett book, on Thursday. I can't even get my placemarks up in a timely fashion. In my defense, I was busy packing for and then attending The Roots Picnic with a bunch of virtual strangers, and doing the typical Philly activites: cheesesteak eatin', Liberty Bell watchin', ass grabbin', famous internet personality punchin', strip club attendin'. You know. The ushe.

The Odd Sea, by Frederick Reiken, is being completed as we un-speak.

I think I'm killing my roommate's goldfish. They are trying to eat their own poop.

Lisztomania

I found out we're allowed to post placemarks for our Cannonball Read books as soon as we're finished with them, even if we don't get the review up until later. Since I'm about a dozen reviews behind, I'm going to post my list up until now instead of doing a barrage of review-less posts. At some point I'll think about putting a continuously updating list on the right-hand side of the page, but then I'll decide to do something else instead and it'll never happen.

1. Anansi Boys - Neil Gaiman
2. Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America's Soul - Edward Humes
3. Myra Breckinridge - Gore Vidal
4. Stardust - Neil Gaiman
5. P.S. Your Cat Is Dead - James Kirkwood
6. Franny and Zooey - J.D. Salinger
7. Sellevision - Augusten Burroughs
8. Timequake - Kurt Vonnegut
9. Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen
10. Notes From a Small Island - Bill Bryson
11. Good Omens - Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
12. Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need - Dave Barry
13. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
14. Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea - Chelsea Handler
15. Lord Emsworth and Others - P.G. Wodehouse
16. Full Moon - P.G. Wodehouse
17. The Very Virile Viking - Sandra Hill
18. Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
19. Take the Cannoli - Sarah Vowell
20. Not a Chance: The Myth of Chance in Modern Science and Cosmology - RC Sproul
21. The Color of Magic - Terry Pratchett
22. Sick Puppy - Carl Hiassen
23. The Areas of My Expertise - John Hodgman
24. The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World - A.J. Jacobs
25. The Friend of Women and Other Stories - Louis Auchincloss
26. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues - Tom Robbins
27. Her Infinite Variety - Louis Auchincloss
28. Hocus Pocus - Kurt Vonnegut
29. She's Come Undone - Wally Lamb
30. Captain Freedom: A Superhero's Quest for Truth, Justice, and the Celebrity He So Richly Deserves - G. Xavier Robillard
31. Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street - Michael Lewis
32. King Dork - Frank Portman
33. Snoop - What Your Stuff Says About You-Sam Gosling
34. Small Gods - Terry Pratchett

Books I'm reading now:
Hogfather - Terry Pratchett
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
Stealing Lincoln's Body - Thomas J. Craughwell
Mole People - Jennifer Toth