Stuff I've Been Reading: A Monthly Column (3/08)

BOOKS BOUGHT:

• Sacred Games--Vikram Chandra
• The Invention of Everything Else--Samantha Hunt (audiobook)
• The Book of Yoga--Christina Brown
• Caricature--Daniel Clowes
• Pussey!--Daniel Clowes
• McSweeney's #26--Dave Eggers (editor)
• Where to Invade Next--Stephen Elliott (editor)
• 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die--Stephen Jay Schneider (editor)
• The Pillars of the Earth--Ken Follett (audiobook)

BOOKS READ:

• The French Lieutenant's Woman--John Fowles

The French Lieutenant's Woman

The French Lieutenant's Woman tells the story of Sarah Woodruff, a woman who becomes a pariah after having inappropriate relations with a shipwrecked Frenchman.  The book looks at the aftermath of that disastrous relationship and follows the new one Sarah has with a local gentleman, Charles Smithson.  Mr. Smithson is engaged to an heiress, but begins to question that engagement as he spends more time with Sarah.  You can take it from there.  Oh wait, maybe you can't just take it from there.  Did I mention the book has three different endings?  It's kind of like a Choose Your Own Adventure book for adults.

This was my third novel by John Fowles.  The first two, The Collector and The Magus, are among my favorite books.  The French Lieutenant's Woman isn't a bad book, by any means (it's ranked #93 on the Top 100 Novels list the Radcliffe Publishing Course put out in 1998), but I still didn't like it nearly as much as the other John Fowles books I've read.

By the way, The French Lieutenant's Woman should've been entitled The French Lieutenant's Whore.  That's what everyone in the book calls the "woman" of the title.  I suspect they called the book what they did because most people wouldn't want to be caught buying or reading a book with the word "whore" in the title.

• Caricature--Daniel Clowes

Caricature

I've recently been tracking down some of Daniel Clowes' pre-Ghost World material.  I picked up Caricature and Pussey! this month and they helped me through the weeks of not being able to read real books.  I've been writing too much about comics and graphic novels lately, so I don't want to go into much detail on these.  I'll just say that Caricature was excellent.  It was similar to Twentieth Century Eightball in that it featured short stories (as opposed to one long story like Ghost World).  The stories were all good except for "Gynecology".  I had no idea what was going on with that one.

• Pussey!--Daniel Clowes  

Pussey!

This book was really little more than a funny title.  The story looks at the rise and fall of a comic book penciller named Dan Pussey.  It was funny in places (particularly the chapter "Dan Pussey's Masturbation Fantasy"), but mostly it was a let-down.  Pussey! is still better than 99% of things to be found in a comic book store, but it's not nearly as good as the other Daniel Clowes books I've read.

I'm not sure what I'm complaining about, though.  Pussey! only cost $10.  Most of the other Clowes books cost twice that much. 

• Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, etc.--Ted Thompson (editor)

Noisy Outlaws...

My mom bought this off the McSweeney's website for $3, and I stole it off her bookshelf and took it home with me.  The full title of the book is Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Things That Aren't as Scary, Maybe, Depending on How You Feel About Lost Lands, Stray Cellphones, Creatures from the Sky, Parents Who Disappear in Peru, a Man Named Lars Farf, and One Other Story We Couldn't Quite Finish, So Maybe You Could Help Us Out.  Upon first glance, it appears to be a children's book.  The stories are short, illustrated, and often feature children as the main characters.  Further reading reveals that these young characters often end up decapitated in the woods or abandoned by their parents, so I'm not really sure it's a children's book.  Maybe it's a demented children's book.  It's hard to say.

I have no idea what to make of Noisy Outlaws, but I certainly enjoyed reading it.  It was probably my favorite book of the month.  With the exception of Jon Scieszka's "Each Sold Separately", the stories were all enjoyable and worth reading. 

• Gentlemen of the Road--M-----l Chabon

Gentlemen of the Road

I was incredibly disappointed with The Yiddish Policemen's Union.  It was my least favorite book of 2007.  M-----l Chabon is still one of my favorite authors, though, so I decided to give Gentlemen of the Road a try.  It's an adventure story along the lines of Robin Hood or Don Quixote.  The working title of the novella was Jews With Swords.  That tells you a lot.

The main characters in Gentlemen of the Road are Zelikman, a skinny doctor with a hat fetish, and Amram, a gigantic Abyssinian warrior with an ax called "The Mother-Defiler".  These two mismatched travel partners get tangled up with an usurped Khazar prince who wants to reclaim his family's throne.  There are some adventures and some battles.  There are elephants.  You get the idea.  

It seems like strange subject matter for a Pulitzer Prize winner, but at least he's not writing about Alaska anymore.  Gentlemen of the Road was actually a good book.  It doesn't make up for The Yiddish Policemen's Union, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

• McSweeney's #26--Dave Eggers (editor)

McSweeney's #26

Imagine that you're used to getting an awesome mixtape in the mail four times a year.  They're usually full of wonderful new songs by musicians you've mostly never heard before.  Imagine that many of your current favorite musicians were originally discovered on these mixtapes and you always look forward to the day the next tape will show up in the mail.  Then imagine that your most recent mixtape consists of little more than demos, backing tracks, and the first part of a really long song that you'd have to buy for $22 if you want to hear how it ends.

That's what McSweeney's #26 was like for me.  The issue was divided into two 120 page pocket-sized booklets.  Many of the stories enclosed were excerpts from works-in-progress.  In fact, the first 40+ pages of the second booklet was a selection from John Brandon's upcoming novel, Arkansas.  The novel is going to be published by McSweeney's, so they're basically using the Quarterly Concern to hawk their upcoming publishing projects.  I don't mind if they ship along free samples of future releases (as they've done in the past), but including the teasers in the issue itself is shady...especially when the hawked story isn't very interesting in the first place.

Fortunately, there were a few good stories in #26.  I especially liked "Porcus Omnivorus" by Ismet Prcic and "Charity" by Wayne Harrison.  The former tells the story of an ex-soldier who accidentally ends up at a backyard barbeque thrown by his enemies.  The latter tells why you should never hire a meth-head to work in your autoshop. 

Oh, I forgot to mention that your most recent mixtape inexplicably includes Rupert Holmes' "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)".  Garry Craig Powell's short story "Moving Crucifixion" blatantly rips off the 70s pop classic.  I can't believe the story got published as is.  

• Where to Invade Next--Stephen Elliott (editor)

Where to Invade Next

This strange little book came packaged with McSweeney's #26 (although it can be purchased separately).  I guess the editors felt bad for their lackluster issue and decided to send along a free book to lessen my disappointment.  The fact that the freebie was a book about which country America should attack next came as a surprise to me, but it actually made for intriguing reading.  The information inside was legitimate and well-researched.  The editors at McSweeney's probably did a better job researching these seven countries than the Bush Administration did researching Iraq prior to invading a few years back.

I'm going to vote for invading Venezuela.  Maybe Sudan, too.  Then I would send some top-secret assassins to off some other despots.

CURRENTLY READING:

• Tree of Smoke--Denis Johnson
• The Invention of Everything Else--Samantha Hunt (audiobook)