Juliet, Naked

There are a few authors who are likely to appear on this site frequently.  While I will attempt to review series as a whole rather than individual books within them, there are several authors whose work I will seek out regardless of whether they are part of an established series or not: Timothy Zahn, Laurie R. King, Nick Hornby, and others.  Given that Hornby inspired this blog to begin with, it's hardly surprising to find another of his books on the list, and I figured it was a good choice to re-start the blog after a hiatus.

Juliet, Naked was a relatively short book as far as most of what I read is concerned. I got it in audiobook format from Audible as a promotional offer.  With typical Hornby style, your initial reaction to most of the characters is that they're selfish and unlikable, but you very quickly identify with them to the point where you see a lot of yourself in each of them and can share in their desires and motivations.  Who hasn't been a tad too obsessed with some musician or band before?  Or wanted more from an artist of some sort than they've actually released be it books, music, film, television, etc?  The underlying relationship angst plot is typical Hornby and still comes off as believable and not as tired as one might expect from the trope, Hornby having the ability to give different voice to the characters in each book such that their perspective changes your understanding of each of their situations.  Hornby's love of music is evident as well, as his description of the music in the book left me wishing some of the songs were actually available to be heard.
A common thread to the people in Juliet is failure.  While Tucker Crowe, (presumably largely inspried by people like Bob Dylan, Jackson Brown and similar singer-songwriters) has a committed cult following, he's a failure at life in his own eyes, the realization of his utterly pathetic fatherhood leading him to giving up his music career.  Annie (probably the main protagonist) feels she has wasted her life with her boyfriend Duncan, who realizes he's wasted a lot of his own life obsessing over Tucker Crowe.  It's Hornby's special wit which allows him to find the humor in all the failure and allow the book's bleak subject matter leave the reader with humor and satisfaction (and perhaps take a sharper look at some of his own behavior) which is what keeps me coming back to his work.
Juliet was the first Hornby book I'd read (listened to) in a while.  It had been several years since A Long Way Down which seemed to be an important book to me at the time, but has faded significantly since.  After Juliet, I went on to read Slam and while it had similar themes of relationship (failure,) parenting (failure) and such, it didn't strike the same tone with me, perhaps because the characters were much younger (teenaged.)
I'll anxiously await Hornby's next book, and in the meantime, perhaps I'll go back to A Long Way Down and see if it still carries the same gravitas it did when I last read it in 2005 or so. Apparently treating failure with humor is the key to my enjoyment of a work, as Hornby books are always enjoyable and one of my favorite current TV shows is The Venture Bros., the all-encompassing theme of which is failure. I wonder what that says about my outlook on life?

The Heir to the Empire Trilogy by Timothy Zahn

If you cast your mind back to 1992, when The Heir to the Empire came out, you may recall that Return of the Jedi had been released nearly a decade before, but kids my age were still very much into Star Wars. Nevertheless, in a significantly less consumerish environment, there weren't any action figures still available, (I can remember searching old stores for leftovers) and there wasn't the plethora of books, comics, tv shows, legos, audiobooks, and God knows what else from the Star Wars universe available. In 1992, however, Sci-Fi veteran Timothy Zahn was authorized to write a continuation of the Star Wars saga. It was, of course a huge hit, and it would probably still have been a huge hit had it been a poorly written, but actiony story. It wasn't. Zahn created a wonderfully complex story with some terrific characters, some of which were coopted later by significantly inferior writers (although I must say I am pleased no one seriously tried to coopt Thrawn.) The story keeps one guessing, and even though, much like in the Star Wars movies themselves, you knew that the good guys would win, and you knew more certainly in these stories that Zahn probably wouldn't be allowed by LucasArts to kill off the main characters, but the new characters were fair game, and many of them were rich enough that you did care about them. As a kid, I went on to read some of the many many many many other Star Wars books that followed the success of this experiment, but none of them really measured up to Zahn's stories. I went on to read most of everything else Zahn ever released, and am glad that I did so. Most of the other Star Wars books were barely worth reading, but Zahn's trilogy, and the four or five other Star Wars books he's released since, even the one where he had to try to reclaim one of his most popular characters (Mara Jade) was quite enjoyable and still innovative, despite the saturation of the Star Wars market.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

I really enjoyed this book. The problem that I had with it was the same as I had with The Kite Runner in that I was going along loving the story and enjoying it until I got (near) to the end, where suddenly there was a horribly depressing ending. This isn't exactly a requirement for an enjoyable read, but it's probably necessary for "really good literature." Nevertheless, it's something that jars me from my enjoyment of the book as a nice escape and draws me back to merely enjoying the book as an excellently written piece of fiction. While that is fine in and of itself, I have a feeling that that need for something that is simply enjoyable as an escape is probably a big part of why I read more "pulp" type fiction that has little muscle behind it; lots of sci fi etc. I dislike conflict in my real life, and unpleasant things, and tend to enjoy far more movies and books and television where the conflict and tension is so stylized and/or fantastic that I can separate myself from it basically in the same act as the suspension of disbelief -- sci fi works well for this.

At any rate, this was an enjoyable read and even with the knowledge in the back of my head that something like the ending unpleasantness was coming, it still will be fairly fondly remembered as a fun, fantastic read.

Moneyball by Michael Lewis

Bought: March 2010
Read: March 2010

I really enjoyed Home Game, so despite my assertion long ago that I didn't want to read Moneyball for fear that it would hinder my enjoyment of the game. This, I think was founded more in a misunderstanding of what the book was all about. The way Michael Lewis writes can make a dull subject interesting, but this wasn't a dull story. The characters involved are well fleshed out and their motivation is clear. Lewis allows you to really feel like you're in the room with Billy Beane and in his head in a lot of ways. Reading it eight years after the primary draft that the book discusses (2002) also helped, as names like Swisher, Teahan, Span, Kazmir, Fielder, Blanton, Papelbon and Youkilis have a different meaning now than they did at the time of the draft (also drafted by the Twins that year: Neshek, Crain, Peterson.)

I raced through this book and really had a good time doing it. A lot of economic talk is there, but it's really about baseball. A useful way to discuss at least on a very superficial level the economic concepts involved. I think I'm going to pick up Liar's Poker as well based on this reading, but I'm not certain when I'll get around to reading it. We'll see. I do a lot better with books that have audiobook versions, since I can listen to them while watching Nathaniel, but the other problem is that I can usually read a book faster than I can listen to an audiobook. But that requires time to read.

Home Game, by Michael Lewis

Bought: Borrowed from Library 3/20/2010
Read: Finished 3/22/2010 at about 11:00 AM.

I went to the library hoping to pick up a good movie on Sunday. (We succeeded, actually, nabbing Citizen Kane) but also looked for a few books. I found a copy of Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem, but decided it was too long (500 pages). I was actually looking for a copy of Moneyball, which was recommended in the Hornby book, but in looking for Michael Lewis, I found Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood. Since I haven't the slightest idea of what I'm doing as a father eight and a half months in, I thought this might be a good book to pick up. I knew from the reviews of Lewis' other books that he could make seemingly dull topics relatively interesting, so I thought this would be a good bet. I was right. From the first 15 pages of the introduction, I was hooked. The book isn't long; only 190 pages, but I said that I wanted to make sure I got through it quickly, because I'm notorious for missing due dates and accruing library fines. I needn't have worried. By the end of the first hour of reading it, I was around page 90. I don't know if it's increased speed because of law school, if it's just light reading, or if it was just enjoyable, but I raced through this book, laughing along the way. I wanted to reach the break between part II and part III last night, so I read for a little while in bed and roused my wife with laughter a couple of times as she drifted off to sleep. I made up for it this morning by taking the baby into the living room to play and letting her sleep in a bit for the first time in over a year.
I gave the book to her to read this morning also. It's about being a father and not knowing what you're doing, but it's so fun and enjoyable that I think anyone reading it with the least idea of what parenting might be like will enjoy it. I'm looking forward to getting Moneyball. I like baseball, so if it's anywhere close to as good as Home Game, it should be a blast.

Boomsday by Christopher Buckley

Bought: Spring of 1L year (2008)

Read: Relatively soon after that, during the summer after 1L year.

I bought this book based on its cover. Sad, I know. But the cover is a peak--the Boomsday is on the title page and the thick cover is the blue and yellow explosion. I had recently seen Thank You for Smoking, so this intrigued me. The description on the back cover was also interesting.

Christopher Buckley's brand of satire takes something real, and pushes it to an extreme. The scary thing is, with both this book, Supreme Courtship and the movie version of Thank You for Smoking, you can actually see much of what he write happening in the real world.

Boomsday is about what happens when all the Boomers retire, and there isn't enough money to support the social security system. Sound familiar? Well the solution that the characters in the book come up with is... well, suicide. Boomers are given incentives to off themselves around 65 or so, I think. There's a huge youth-movement political push to get this pushed through the legislature, and a Senator is elected President by telling the incumbent to "Shut the Fuck Up" (it engaged the youth vote ;-))

The one thing that Buckley seemed to fall into when I read this was running into endings. He seemed to rush from the penultimate chapter to the end very quickly, like he was given a page limit or a deadline was coming up. I felt similarly with Smoking, so I felt this might be a common problem with Buckley's books. Supreme Courtship didn't seem to suffer from this problem, though, so perhaps it was a function of the movie adaptation of Smoking, and something in Boomsday in particular. Even if this were a common failing in Buckley's books, however, I'd probably still read them all (eventually.) He's got a great wit and ability to make the world's problems seem ridiculous. That's a good thing for someone like me who often feels utter despair when thinking about these issues. While I still have difficulty thinking about many current political issues, whilst actually reading the book.

I haven't decided if I'm going to give a rating to books, because I don't have a hope that I could be consistent with it. But Buckley has been added to my list of (current) authors to seek out, alongside Zahn, Laurie R. King, and a few others.

Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem

Bought: Loaned to me probably around 2004 or 5.

Read: Around that time; I read it right when I got it.

I was given Motherless Brooklyn by my mother to read a few years ago. I don't really remember why it was that she gave it to me; it wasn't a gift, it was a loan (although it's resided on my shelf since then, despite the fact that, as I will get to, she hasn't yet read it herself.)

This was a good book, the story of a man with tourette's who works as a sort of henchman. Really, there's very little that I remember about the plot. I think that the main character's boss was killed and the story is largely about him trying to solve the murder. I can remember a couple of passages fairly well--him talking about the difference between taxi and car services, a scene near the end where he switches from being fixated on the number five, and changing to four, and throws his shoe into the ocean.

This was a good enough book that I went looking for some more information about it, and found that there was a movie in the works with Ed Norton slotted to play the main character (I wish I could remember his name....) It would seem that no progress has been made on this, but I do hope that it happens. Oddly enough, it wasn't until Fortress of Solitude, Lethem's first book was mentioned in The Polysyllabic Spree that I even thought to go looking for it. The scan here is actually the same cover as the copy I have, so it's strange to me that I didn't think to look for it, since it's mentioned on the cover, but perhaps it's evidence of my laziness. Even when I've read a good book, I often will not feel ready to pick up a new book right away. It takes some time for me to get engrossed in a book, at which point, I often cannot put it down until it is done. On the other hand, before I've become engrossed in it, I can easily be distracted from it, and end up abandoning a book. It's an odd thing, though, because I can only remember a few books that I never finished. Most of them were school-assigned books in high school or even junior high. I Che is one that was during college, and When Nietzsche Wept which I started before my 2L year, and I don't know if I'll ever go back to it. I picked it up because I was intrigued by the author's other book (which I also bought at the time,) The Schopenhauer Cure. I still don't know if the two are actually related, but I tend to doubt it, so I might go to the Cure instead of going back to Nietzsche, which, around 100 pages in, which is usually well far enough to get me interested, was just not holding my interest. I've wandered a bit from the subject of this entry, but I expect that won't be uncommon.