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.
