After hardly reading any books in law school, I’ve been reading a fair amount here. I finally finished Kavalier and Clay. That was a while ago. I liked it (a lot more than Wonder Boys, which I thought was self-indulgent crap), but maybe not as much as everybody else. I mean, it probably can fit into the great american novel category, but I was never into comic books and I think to truly love the book, an interest in comic books would help. I also remember being a bit disappointed by the end. Still, I enjoyed reading it and Chabon is a terriffic writer (something I even thought reading Wonder Boys). Incidentally, another “great american novel” that I think gets overlooked is The Stand by Stephen King. I like a number of Stephen King books, but even the ones I like are mostly crap, but not the Stand.
Anyway, back to what I’ve read since I’ve got to Madison in August. After I finished Kavalier and Clay, I read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, which is now apparently being made into a move. I have no idea how. Blink is a fairly interesting book by a New Yorker writer about how people make snap decisions. It’s sort of a long New Yorker article, actually, except that the person who edited this book let him write it like a business book (I think Gladwell used to be a business writer at a newpaper or something like that, but don’t quote me on it), so every other sentence ends with a preposition.
Speaking of every other sentence ending with a preposition, the next book I read was Charles Cross’s biography of Kurt Cobain, Heavier than Heaven. I’m somewhat Nirvana obsessed, so I found it interesting, but it is probably one of the most poorly written books I’ve ever read. I mean, badly written to the point of really annoying me. Possibly more badly written than my posts here.
So, I responded to that by next reading Lynn Truss’s Eats, Shoots and Leaves, which is probably the most amusing book on punctuation in the world. It wasn’t as “laugh out loud funny” as it had been billed, but I enjoyed it greatly and have been using far better punctuation since reading it. (Do you think “laugh out loud” should be written with hyphens: “laugh-out-loud”?) I don’t think I’ll read her book on manners, but I would love to read a funny book on manners. I always thought Miss Manners was funny, though that wasn’t her point.
Now I’m reading David Seadris’s most recent book, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. So far I’m enjoying it, but not as much as I remember enjoying Me Talk Pretty One Day, which I didn’t enjoy nearly as much as Naked which pretty much had me ROTFLMAO (that’s the only one of those I use; I just find it so funny: “rolling on the floor laughing my ass off”; I like to say it Rot-Flam-O, or you can drop the “t” and get Rah-flam-O). Like those two books, this one is funny and quite touching and also scathing and discomforting at times. But it’s not drawing me in the way those did. I’m only on the third piece, so we’ll see…
I’m also reading Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld (who is a woman), which is a book about a middle class girl from Indiana going to an elite prep school in the northeast. Amusing, depressing, and well written thus far. Although I don’t like one technique she uses: The book is in first person, written in the past tense. But most of the book has a “present feel” to it and the narrator doesn’t really seem to know more than the character knew at the point in time being described. But occasionally you get the, “years later I would…” something something something. Or occasionally, you could tell the writer had knoweldge that the character doesn’t (a la The Wonder Years). But it’s only been occasional (in some sense, that’s the problem, but oh well). Still, I’m enjoying it quite a bit.
I’ve also been reading a partial collection of Borges’ nonfiction writing. But I only read from that once in a while. I’ve read most of his collected fictions (which I have in a single book) and I love his work. The non-fiction is even more difficult. All in English, my Spanish is not good enough to read Borges.
I also bought a few other books today: Home Land by Sam Lipsyte, which like Prep came off the NY Times recommended reading list; Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, which I’ve always resisted reading but I think I’m finally going to give it a try (that’s what I said about Naked Lunch and Catch-22, and they’re sitting on my bookshelf with a bookmark like 30 pages into each…); I also got a Vonnegut book I haven’t read (which is silly given how many times I’ve read Cat’s Cradle): God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater; and finally I bought Garner’s A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage just to prove what a big nerd I am. But I’m sure I’ll love it.
I also finally found a store that carries the movie Bullitt, which is my personal favorite Steve McQueen vehicle. I was going to watch that tonight, but decided to write this post instead. Actually, I think I’ll go watch like 20 minutes of it now then go to bed since I have to work tomorrow.
December 20, 2005 at 4:10 pm
[...] So, I really liked the book. My original discomfort (see previous post “I’ve been reading a lot”) with the fact that the narrator was the main character basically 10-15 years later ended up being perhaps the highlight of the book. I read very little first-person writing, and I think a big part of that is I’m always a bit uncomfortable with the fact that the narrator is usually describing what he or she thought/felt/knew at the time the events are taking place but that you have a sense that he or she knows something more that they aren’t telling you. They must, right, because they are writing some time in the future. But the late-20s or early-30s “Lee” who is the narrator of Prep is quite open with what she knows “now” and occasionally (and charmingly) implores her past self to do what she now thinks she should have done. (Incidentally, Sittenfeld says as much about narration in the Atlantic Monthly interview re-printed in the back of the book, which made me feel very unoriginal. On the other hand, it sort of made me feel like the book was written for me.) That said, she doesn’t ignore the feelings of high school Lee; indeed, this remains the focus of the book. At times the transition between these two Lees is unsuccessful, but usually Sittenfeld does it to great positive effect. [...]
January 12, 2009 at 5:39 pm
[...] the heck is that??? Number two is “prep curtis sittenfeld.” People just love my posts (1, 2) about that book, I guess. My post about former Congressman Duke Cunningham’s enjoyment of [...]