Books on the Fourth of July

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Happy Independence Day! Celebrate with me, a person who thinks the First Amendment still has a chance.
 

046) Final Cut by Charles Burns, finished May 28

The primary recollection I have of reviews when this came out (which I did not read closely intending to read the book first) is that it is darker and more horrifying than Burns's Black Hole. To which all I can say is

What?

Black Hole is a work of extended body horror (the only comparison that seems fitting is Junji Ito). Final Cut is about people who watch horror movies and hope to make one of their own. That alone seems to reject the comparison. Perhaps the reviewers were suggesting they found Final Cut the more devastating work to which, okay, that's subjective.

Final Cut is the story of two character: one finding herself, the other losing himself. Black Hole was about teenagers and much of their character change happens out in the woods. Final Cut is about twenty-somethings and much of their character change happens out in the woods. Plus, I think they're Burns's best two books. No wonder everyone wants to compare them.

I think I personally like Final Cut more. Granted, it has been a long, long time since I read Black Hole (which was finished in 2005, after all), but while it was excellent the greater restraint of Final Cut made its characters' growth more happy and falls more tragic. But at least they live and breathe which, frankly, doesn't always happen in a Burns book. It's great to see him on the top of his form no matter which of the two you end up preferring. 

about a week

047) Fever Beach by Carol Hiassen, finished June 12

I've never read a Hiassen novel. Nonfiction, sure, but not a novel. Even though my oldest son was a huge fan of Hoot when he was a kid.

But the covers of his books are always eyecatching and he has a good reputation and I'm interested in what funny wirters are up to. Then The Atlatntic pushed me over. 

I did enjoy myself. Some of the satire is pretty broad and even mean-spirited. I do agree that America's would-be nazis deserve mockery, but, on the other hand, these people are fools, sad and lost, and the purpose of satire is to punch up. So I appreciated the Matt Gaetz standin more than the little loser standins. It was a strange position to be in, as a reader.

I was also startled (spoiler warning) that Hiassen decided to give his audience a series of deaths at the end. Most of the major bad-guy characters die in the last chapter and a half. Which comes off like some sort of perverse wish-fulfillment.

I liked the good guys and I did find stuff amusing, but I'm realizing as I write this that the book feels more like twitteresque in-crowd mockery than "literature." I get why people like it, but it won't make you feel any better once your laughter dies down. It provides about as much longterm comfort as a couple Advil.

Still. There's not a lot of broad comedy reaching a broad audience. So that has to provide some benefit to the national psyche. I mean, right?

maybe a couple weeks 

048) How to Talk to Your Succulent by Zoe Persico, finished June 17

I found a lot to like about this book. It's a charming little thing about grief and growth with popping colors and a mildly confusing nature mythology.

But there were also a lot of things I didn't like. The characters have largely the same face and the dialogue tends to resolve into the just-so words of a roleplay following some emotional-intelligence training.

Which perhaps is a little cynical of me. I suspect, when I give it to my 8yrold (as I will tomorrow), she will share none of these complaints.

Sometimes just let a middle-grade book be a middle grade book 

(The publisher sent me a gratis copy.) 

perhaps a week 

049) Poetry Comics from the Book of Hours by Bianca Stone, June 24

I like Bianca Stone's work. I've read one of her poetry collections through and I've been working on another for over a year at a lleeiissuurreellyy pace. This one, however, is different. Poetry and Comics all at once.

These poems are more abstract than most of her stuff I've read. The comics are not always very comicky. You can see a one-pager that reappeared in this collection here. Her visual style is line-heavy with a good, loose sense of anatomy. Reminds me of Dave McKean, actually. 

I liked the book quite a lot and it made me want to engage in similar artistic pursuits (I have a plan for one!), but I don't feel that I much understood it. It was more like a strange painting than it was like either poetry or comics. I would more expect to see it on the walls of SFMOMA than, you know, in a book.

But that's a fun experience art can, sometimes, give: it can give you pleasure without making any sense at all. 

i think three days but they were not sequential 

050) Night of Camp David by Fletcher Knebel, finished June 25

This is a novel about a president of the United States who goes insane and the politicos who try to do something about it. The ending is a bit too convenient (though suitably patriotic) and the writing has a very midcentury feel (like this book, not this one). It mixes high ideas with sex and paranoia in a way someone of my generation might know from John Grisham or Dan Brown. It is, in other words, custom built to be a bestseller.

You might ask how I came to pick up this 1965 novel and I would answer . . . that's a very good question. I didn't expect it to show up at the library with my name on it. Obviously I'd put it on hold some time in the past and scheduled it to arrive just as school ended, but I didn't remember doing it. Since it was about madness adjacent to nukes, I assumed it was the novel both Dr Strangelove (which I think is overrated) and Fail Safe (which I talked the library into buying and have checked out about five times and still never managed to watch) are based on, but, um, no. Although Kubrick did start a copyright violation suit against the Fail Safe people, in fact, neither movie is based on Night of Camp David. Instead, they are, respectively, based on Red Alert and Fail-Safe. And so, whatever reason I put this on hold, that wasn't it.

Anyway, Knebel's also the author of Five Days in May which, like Fail Safe, is a serious and well-regarded movie about nuclear war that I have never watched. I won't read the novel (this was a fine read, but . . . not my style) but perhaps someday I'll watch it.

Just to stir my future memory, this is the book where the man's wife and mistress both love to kiss his cleft chin, where proposing a national wiretap law is proof positive of insanity, where the president goes mad while president as opposed to being elected while mad, where suggesting a president is crazy makes people think you are crazy, where a drummer's album can be the hottest thing among the youths, and other unlikely/"unlikely" things.

a couple weeks

  

051) The Serial Killer's Son Takes a Wife by Michael Libling, finished July 3

Thanks to the title and cover design, I assumed this would be about the titular son meeting a woman, their courtship, and the problems that ensue on the way to the altar. But no. Not at all. They get married pretty quickly, right near the beginning of the novel. And then more happens.

This is a pretty bold book, structurally speaking. Although some violence occurs near the beginning of the book (and throughout), it's hardly preparation for the grand guignol–level horrors at the end. And introducing a (potentially) supernatural element three quarters of the way through is wild. Wild.

The comic elements of the book are strikingly similar to those I described above in relation to Hiassen's novel. I have some of the same complaints, but balanced differently.

But, also like Hiassen, the primary characters are actually pretty great. Son and especially wife are terrific company. And our p-o-v allows for uncertainty in some surprising places.

In short, it's grotesque and at times inconsistent in quality, but I didn't stop reading it.

The strongest element, in the end, as promised by the title, is the marriage. It takes a couple stumbles, but the way Rob and Cori navigate their peculiar backgrounds and complicating relationship feels honest and true even when some of the stuff that happens is Grade A Bizarre.

(Note for people who collect such things: a pair of LDS missionaries are murdered for a two-paragraph bit. Plus, William Shunn is thanked in the acknowledgment, if you want need two vaguely relevant data points.) 

a couple weeks 

 

 

earlier this year..........

 

Bro! Tell me we still know how to speak of kings!

001) Beowulf translated by Maria Dahvana Headley, finished January 1
002) Cthulhu Is Hard to Spell: Volume Three, finished January 1
003) Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin (translated by Megan McDowell), finished January 8
004) My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris, finished January 11
005) You're a Good Sport, Charlie Brown, finished January 12
005) Into the Headwinds: Why Belief Has Always Been Hard—and Still Is by Terryl Givens and Nathaniel Givens, finished January 24
006) My Favorite Thing Is Monsters: Book Two by Emil Ferris, finished January 25

Maybe we should just pretend this set begins and ends with Wednesday Addams

007) Chas. Addams Half-Baked Cookbook, finished January 29
008) Monica by Daniel Clowes, finished February 3
009) The Unexpurgated French Edition of Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland, finished February 19
010) Peach and the Isle of Monsters by Franco Aureliani and Agnes Garbowska, finished February 20
011) Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, finished February 28
012) Comic Poems edited by Peter Washington, finished March 7

Love, Beauty, and a complete lack of sasquatch 

013) Love that Dog by Sharon Creech, finished March 11
014) Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper, finished March 21
015) Antelope Spring by John Bennion, finished March 24
016) Shelley Frankenstein by Colleen Madden, finished March 28
017) Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew #21: Double Take, finished April 5
018) The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clark, finshed April 8
019) Rave by Jessica Campbell, finished April 13
020) The Creeps: A Deep Dark Fears Collection by Fran Krause, finished April 14

Do not ask what she does with the babies.

027) Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito, finished April 21
028) Somna: A Bedtime Story by Becky Cloonan and Tula Lotay, finished April 23
029) Shadow Life by Hiromi Goto and Ann Xu, finished April 24
030&031) The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, finished April 25
032) Raised by Ghosts by Briana Loewinsohn, finished April 26
033) Ephemera by Briana Loewinsohn, finished April 26

Brighter and brighter until we all get our heads lopped off 

034) Brighter and Brighter until the Perfect Day by Sharlee Mullins Glenn, finished April 27
035) Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett, finished May 3
036) The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, finished May 5
037) Equus by Peter Shaffer
038) Travesties by Tom Stoppard, finished May 8
039) The Art of Intimacy: The Space Between by Stacey D'Erasmo, finished May 10
040) A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt, finished May 16

Criticism & Comics

041) Arts and Inspiration: Mormon Perspectives, edited by Steven P. Sondrup, finished May 18
042) The Waiting by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, finished May 19
043) Odessa by Jonathan Hill, finished May 22
044) Barnstormers: A Ballad of Love and Murder by Tula Lotay and Scott Snyder, finished May 22
045) Bingo Baby, finished May 26
 

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