The Air Gave Ted Bundy MurderUnfinished Books: 𝑴𝒖𝒓𝒅𝒆𝒓𝒍𝒂𝒏𝒅 by Caroline Fraser

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When I picked up this book from the library I was shocked to see it weighed as much as a Gutenberg Bible.

I didn’t know what I was getting into!

Part of what has garnered this book such excellent reviews is it genre-fluid nature. For instance, The New Yorker described it as “an extraordinarily well-written and genre-defying blend of memoir, social and environmental history, and forensic inquest.” I mean, yes, but that also kind of got on my nerves. I’ll get into why in a second, but let’s start with the main thesis.

I suppose most people are now aware of the high-high-high correlation between leaded-gasoline exhaust in the air and violent crime. It basically explains why Scorsese’s early movies look the way they do.

You can make this chart with any nation in the world and you get the exact same overlay. Leaded gasoline leads to violence when all those poisoned kids come of age.

Ends up, and this is the main thesis I was refering to, advanced pollution leads to advanced violence. She focusses mainly on a Tacoma smelter. Downwind of that plant lived not just Ted Bundy but BTK, Green River, Happy Face, Night Stalker, Boxcar, Want-Ad, Lust, Phantom Sniper, that DC sniper, Hillside Stranglers, I-5, Coin Shop, Eastside, Werewold Butcher, and others—many of whom remain unidentified but almost certainly tied to the pollution given their area of activity.

(Did you know there’s another smelter near where the Zodiac got his start?)

Anyway, this argument is extremely persuasive and something to keep in mind next time you’re looking at beautiful art the Guggenheims are using to launder their reputation.

Did you know that when they moved their smelters to Mexico and a new generation of kids were born under those fumes women started disappearing en masse?

This is terrifying and convincing stuff.

But Caroline Fraser isn’t satisfied with this. She also needs to go in depth about how deadly the interstate pontoon bridges have been, the local volcanoes’ bloodlust, etc. It’s often about her growing up in the regions and how much it sucked and how a bunch of serial killers fit in nicely with her experience.

Those things are all interesting themselves, but they don’t always mesh well together, in my opinion. Which is why I ended up skipping many pages here and there. I would be enjoying one aspect of the book then something else would start happening and I would be thrown out.

In the end, I probably read 80% of it? And it’s permanently altered they way I think about certain things. (It’s already impacted my current WIP.)

In short, I highly recommend this book. Even though I found it stylistically faulty and packed too full of side issues, it’s still fascinating and worthy of your attention if you have the least information in any of this stuff.

Unfinished Library

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Ah, books.

Ah, libraries.

Ah, eyes too big for one’s calendar.

I’m what librarians call a superuser. Though checking lots of things out doesn’t necessarily mean reading all of them. To be frank, that’s impossible. Unless I chuck this laptop (and probably my family) out a ferry window, it will remain impossible.

But I’ve long been writing about Unfinished Books (and sometimes Rejected Books) and today I have a library’s worth of such books to gab about. Here we go.

✤ ✤ ✤

Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir by Eddie Muller

Loved this book. Read the beginning. Read the ending. Read much of the middle. Looked at maybe all the pictures. Added lots of movies to my to-watch list. Or should have, rather, because I’ve already forgotten most of them and I didn’t write them down. The original version of this book was prior to our current era of broad availability and many of the movies he wrote about were essentially impossible for most people to access. Today, we can access most of them We should do so.

✤ ✤ ✤

Moo by Sharon Creech

I’m a big fan of Creech’s Love That Dog—I’ve done it with both sophomores and AP Lit. I don’t much like its unnecessary sequel Hate That Cat. Moo is sold with those two because, not, as it ends up, because it is a sequel, but because it too is poetry. But with Moo the poetry isn’t part of the this-is-for-school conceit but because it’s just told in poetry. The thing is—I don’t much like the poetry. It works in Love That Dog because this kid is experimenting with not hating poetry. But in Moo that’s not a question. And so the poetry should be . . . better? Anyway. I could have finished it. Lots of white space in this book. But I just couldn’t.

✤ ✤ ✤

The Boys of Riverside: A Deaf Football Team and a Quest for Glory by Thomas Fuller

A book club I recently joined was to read this book next but they forgot to invite me which was okay because I had a hard time with the narrative voice which made reading it a real slog. Fuller’s a journalist and I’m sure a great story in five thousand words would be fine. I wasn’t thrilled about an entire book.

✤ ✤ ✤

The Maniac by Benjamin Labatut

A previous novel the group had read and that my friend recommended was this one. I read maybe the first fifty pages and it was excellent but I had too many library books out at the time and a busy month ahead of me and so I, sad, returned it unread. It’s about a weird genius working on the a-bomb. And it features a topnotch narrative voice, so there.

✤ ✤ ✤

Of All Places! and No Place Like Home by Patience, Richard, and Johnny Abbe.

I was reading a series of articles about humor in the Relief Society Magazine and that’s where I came across the Abbe children. Three kids who wrote massively popular books about their lives back in the Thirties. Of course I had to see this for myself. I read fifty or so pages and enjoyed them but it’s remarkable from the vantage point we call 2025 that these books were as massive as they were. They are charmingly written (allegedly, Patience was the main architect; check out this anecdote of her at 21 with Bette Davis) and a marvelous snapshot and clearly observed, but still. Their tour through Nazi Germany write before everything goes to hell is enlightening. But the little observations about trains and winter and hobos and hotel rooms and the mails are even better. If I owned these, I would certainly finish them. Eventually. I think NYRB or Dover or someone should republish them and aim them at today’s kids.

✤ ✤ ✤

Too Much College; or, Education Eating Up Life, with Kindred Essays in Education and Humour by Stephen Leacock

This was another book I found on the recommendation of the Relief Society. I appreciated this most as proof that people make the same complaints today that they always have about kids and their inferior-to-ours education. It could have been more tightly written. I think I would enjoy Leacock much more if someone would put together a collection of his work that still works well today. But I should mention that I had similar feelings about Benchley when I got him from the library. Now that I have my own copy of his work that I’m working through at a more leisurely pace, I like him all the more. Perhaps the same would be true of Leacock. Though, to be honest, I’m unsure simply because his essays are so much longer. When Benchley has a dud, at least it’ll be over in a hundred-fifty words.

✤ ✤ ✤

Movies Are Prayers: How Films Voice Our Deepest Longings by Josh Larsen

I was unable to renew this one after a mere three weeks which is a bummer because I was into it. I made it through the first couple kinds of prayers and fully intended to finish the book when I discovered it was a day late and unrenewable. And since it was sent over from another library system, the fines accumulate much too quickly to hold onto. I discovered Josh Larsen through his podcast which was recently recommended to me by a KQED friend. Although I sure note that in their last two episodes they’ve fallen short on their understanding of both The Phoenician Scheme and Materialists.

✤ ✤ ✤

Shakespeare's Tragic Art by Rhodri Lewis

As with many of the books here, it was foolish of me to pick it up during May 2025, one of the busiest months of my life. I was being pulled so many directions. With this one, I read a bit of the introduction, most of the first chapter, and then read analysis of some of the more recent plays I’ve read—Julius Caesar, Titus Andronicus, I forget whatall. Anyway, deep waters here. I enjoyed his analysis of the plays very much and would love to own the book so I could finish it sometime solely for those bits. His overall argument? No idea. Didn’t manage to fit that in during the brief moment I possessed the book.

✤ ✤ ✤

Tales of Glass Town, Angria, and Gondal by The Brontës

I’ve always wanted to dig into the Brontës’ childhood fantasy writings but like I dope I decided to pick it up at the absolute worst time. I barely even skimmed this. But that was enough to know I’m unlikely to ever really read this book. It’s fine stuff and interesting considering who wrote it and impressive considering their youth but, in the end, who cares? I don’t have a dissertation to write!

✤ ✤ ✤

Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World by Dorian Lynskey

This is a bit different from the Shakespeare book above in that, while again I enjoyed the bits I did read, I’m not sure Lynskey has an overall point. Unless it’s that we’ve always told world’s-ending stories and that’s it. Still. I read the entire pandemic section (zombies inclusive) and chunks of the rest. If the topic interests you, you’ll have a fun time.

✤ ✤ ✤

Dangerous Fictions: The Fear of Fantasy and the Invention of Reality by Lyta Gold

I’ve already written an entire essay about what’s wrong with this book, but I wrote it when I was still convinced I’d read the entire thing. But I read maybe two or three more pages and that was it. I’m intrigued by the topic and by Gold’s argument, but her rhetoric is a mess. To give just one example, she talks about how people try to cancel authors but they only try to cancel women authors or authors belonging to a minority group. But you can’t cancel authors because good work will rise to the top. But books by canceled women and minorities never get seen so they are canceled. But the famous and powerful cannot be canceled no matter what people say online. But we’re totally going to cancel J.K. Rowling because she has it coming. And so on. I really wanted to like this book and I largely agree with everything she says. But there’s so much, for lack of a better term, performative wokeness, that it eventually becomes unreadable. Unless you’re the sort of person who likes to give your friends a high-five every time you hear a liberal catchphrase. It was maddening. Anyway, if anyone wants to read that unpublished essay, let me know and I’ll post it.

✤ ✤ ✤

Happily: A Personal History, with Fairy Tales by Sabrina Orah Mark

Happily is excellent. A white Jewish American mother raising two black Jewish American boys. A memoir filtered through the language and emotion of fairy tales. It’s terrific. The sort of book I would keep on my nightstand and work my way through over three years. But, alas, that is not how libraries work. This is the only library book on this list I’m still holding on to but I know perfectly well I’ll not be finishing it.

✤ ✤ ✤

The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa (translated by Louise Heal Kawai)

This had a really cool cover and a fun magical-realism premise and . . . is terrible. This is the only book today that I own and that makes no difference. I am not finishing it. It’s possible some of the fault is Kawai’s but the novel itself just makes me feel stupider as I read it. It’s like someone fed a bunch of American YA fiction and the summaries of Miyazaki movies into an LLM and voila. Perhaps if you’re still under the age of fourteen it might work for you.

It’s ironic to end on a book in which a boy and a talking cat go on missions to rescue disrespected books but hey. That’s the reading life.

Unfinished Books from the past (which was worse) and the future (which may be better)

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Hyoo. Library books! You just don't own them. And other people want to read them.

Let's start with the past.

Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World by Tom Holland (not this one)

This was recommended to me by a friend of mine and the time I've spent in this book has been time well spent. Essentially, it explains how the truly terrible world of the past became the world of science and enlightenment today. The secret? Christianity.

This isn't a great secret or anything but it feels like it has been largely forgotten and certainly most of us don't think about the process of Christianity making our reality with the kind of detail, insight, and splendid writing Holland does over 500-page book.

Anyway, I do want to finish reading it. I'll have to get it again before we start the New Testament again. The number of fascinating details and stellar insights per page is unbeatable. And I'm only on page 84, learning thing about Galatea I never did know.

The ancient world, in short, suuuuuucked. (But this we knew already.)

Anyway, get yourself a copy and we can read together late 2028.

And now for the future.

Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth by Ingrid Robeyns

 

Robeyns is the leading thinking re Limitarianism and this is her new book for the popular audience (but you don't have to go popular). The short version of Limitarianism is that there are limits to how rich individuals should be. Most folks find this pretty commonsensical and large percentages of the wealthy do work to divest themselves of their overabundance. But our system continues to create wealthy people. And not just billionaires but lots of lots of decamillionaires whom she also targets.

The argument is self-evident but self-evidence is insufficient to convince people who do not want to believe the sun is out when the sun is out. And so there's plenty of research and thought and argument and persuasion and cetera herein. It's good stuff. And the library bought it on my recommendation. But now other people want to read it. So I'm returning it.

I may return to it because I would like to have its arguments fully in my brain and available to me, but I also feel like the info in Poverty, by America might be more immediately useful so maybe I'll finally crack that first. We'll see.

Regardless, as someone born into this world created by Christian thought—with our beliefs in the value of the individual, the responsibilities we have to one another, and rational thinking—I fully endorse Limitarianism and commend it to you all.

Unfinished Books: Dead seals write vows! (and other fun facts)

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I've been getting a lot of nonfiction from the library lately—too much to read it all all through. But I have been reading it—more than half the pages but less than half the words, generally. But that's what Unfinished Books is for. Because these books too deserve attention.

 

Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals (a,b)

Not finishing this book goes right against its very principles. Among other things, it's about slowing down and listening. All things that would lead to finishing this slim volume.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs clearly has a fascination with marine mammals, but she also clearly had a page count to fill and so spent some time on Wikipedia looking for additional metaphors. But find them she did! Even just reading a healthy percentage of this book I learned a) a lot about marine mammals I did not already know and b) a lot about how those mammals' lives can apply to how we choose to live our own.

This is a terrific little volume and while it does have some annoying bits (like the final chapter, which is a bunch of activities that smell like your least favorite professional-development meeting), largely those were because I was in a rush to learn about some dolphin species I'd never heard of instead of sitting with the previous mammal and learning from it's dermal traits or whatever. Blame me.

1000 Places to See After You Die (a,b)

Ken Jennings takes us to 1000 afterlives, which is a fun gimmick and good way to survey religions and literature and teevee and whatnot, but it's also kind of a lot. If I owned this book it would take me six years to read, never leaving my nightstand.

But I don't own it. And nine weeks isn't enough time to want to return to it that many times. So I largely read the ones I already had familiarity with or a yearning for familiarity with.

 

Letters to a Young Writer (a,b)

These short chapters each have an epigraph and the epigraphs are frequently brilliant. They sometimes say more than the three pages McCann wrote to accompany them.

Which sounds like a slam on McCann and it's true, maybe. Some of the chapters are more poetic exercises than helpful advice and some of the advice is sometimes as elitist as Joey Franklin was sometimes pro-amateurism.

But on the other hand, the book was also frequently beautiful and useful. And although Colum McCann may be overly persuaded by the world's measures of success, he is generally right. But one imagines he can be a little smug in person.

 

How to Be Married (to Melissa) (a,b)

Some real laugh-out-loud moments in this marriage guide on how to be married to his wife (generalizations to your marriage not guaranteed) by stand-up Dustin Nickerson. I didn't think I had any familiarity with him until a page near the end where I read a version of a bit Lady Steed has shown me before because she feels it very deeply. (I find it very upsetting. This is not a point we agree on.)

Although (of course) this is a deliberate work of creation, it also feels like a deep honesty runs through it. There's great stuff about sex and kids, and he gets into issues of faith, which one doesn't often bump into (or at least I don't, unless I'm looking). Some chapters interested me more than others (honestly, most comedians' books should be skimmed rather than read) but the parts I read most thoroughly I most enjoyed. Perhaps because I selected well; perhaps because I selected at all. I can't say.

Dead Seals Write Vows (according to Deliberate 2)

Unfinished Books: Bohemians, Bootleggers, Flappers & Swells

 

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One of the people I became fascinated with through reading the Buster Keaton book was Robert Sherwood. The library didn’t have much on him, but I put stuff on hold. The play was great but what I was really interesed in was his film criticism which, arguably, he invented. So I guess it goes Sherwood–Agee–Kael–Ebert–TBD and so I needed to read the OG, right?

This book met that need (barely—all it has is a jokey essay about kids these days learning geography from movies), but holy smokes look who else is here: P.G. Wodehouse, Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Douglas Fairbanks, Gertrude Stein, A.A. Milne, Edna St. Vincent Millay, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Noel Coward, Carl Sandburg, Jean Cocteau, T.S. Eliot, Bertrand Russell, Colette, E.E. Cummings, Aldous Huxley, Langston Hughes, Sherwood Anderson, Clarence Darrow, Ford Madox Ford, Walter Winchell, Theodore Dreiser, D.H. Lawrence, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., William Saroyan, Thomas Wolfe—and a bunch of other people I’ve heard of less but might be similarly interesting? I mean, I loved Syyed Shaykh Achmed Abdullah’s piece. And I tell you—it made me nostalgic for turn-of-the-century Afghanistan. Which sounds much hepper than today's. (?)

So while I can’t possibly read all of these, I just want to say that this is a book to get from the library and read 20% of. Hoo.

The first piece is by Wodehouse and it called me out:

A man who does anything regularly is practically certain to become a bore. Man is by nature so irregular that, if he takes a cold bath every day or keeps a diary every day or does physical exercices every day, he is sure to be too proud of himself to keep quiet about it. He cannot help gloating over the weaker vessels who turn on the hot tap, forget to enter anything after January the fifth, and shirk the matutinal development of their sinews. He will drag the subject into any conversation in which he happpens to be engaged.

This is essentially a thesis statement for this blog. Writing down every book I read? What a bore.

Believe me: I know it. That’s a big part of why I do it here. If you’ve subscribed, you chose to be bored by me!

At least I don’t write about every unfinished book!

Although, if I did, would have been able to link to Agee as well.

Recalculating….recalculating…..

be bored on the regular with the one-and-only thubstack!

Unfinished book: Ordinary Genius by Kim Addonizio

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Having recently fallen in love with one of Kim Addonizio's poetry collections, I looked to the library for another book. And so I checked out Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within. I didn't anticipate more than sampling it, but it is chockful of good stuff. I sampled a larger percentage of it—so large that it made sense to finish the book. So I started reading through, from missed bit to missed bit. And then I promptly lost it. And with other library books screaming for attention, I didn't find it again until today, the day it is due back. So I'm returning it with some small but significant number of pages unread.

The craft book, by a poet, is a robust genre (Mary Oliver's stands out in my memory). For a group of people allegedly too good for the rest of us, I tend to find these books accessible and charming and familiar.

This is one more book to add to my would-be-good-to-have-in-a-creative-writing-classroom list.

Anyway. Now I'm going to try to cram down a few more of the remaining pages before walking over to the library. Wish me luck!

Two books—one finished, one un

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So two books came into my orbit recently with similar premises. In Seveneves, the moon is dying and thus will kill us. And in Project Hail Mary, the sun is dying and thus will kill us. These books are respectively by Neal Stephenson who has been in the news recently because Mark Zuckerberg is actively creating the dystopia he imagined in his second-only-to-Neuromancer cyberpunk novel which I wasn't all that impressed by, and Andy Weir who has been everyone's favorite scrappy little near-future/hard-scifi nerd novelist ever since The Martian arrived.

I picked up Seveneves because a trio of people told me it was worth reading. And three is kinda too many to ignore. So I asked the library for it and jumped right in. And I was making great progress. When a book breaks 700 pages, you have to stay with it or the library's gonna want it back before it's done, you know?

Anyway, son #2 really wanted to read it and kept sneaking it away so I told him to just take it and read it. He's cranking out books-read faster than I am (and I had another long library book to read anyway).

When I thought he was finished, I picked it back up. He'd lost my bookmark so I spent a long time looking for where I'd left off. Then I read a few pages and he took it back to read the last hundred pages.

The thing is. I wasn't liking it that much.

The concept of the disaster was terrific—the moon breaking apart and becoming (eventually) a life-ending rain of death. But I read hundreds of pages and never got to that. Hundreds of pages of expository dialogue and Stephenson adding paragraphs to make sure we get to enjoy all the research he'd enjoyed. Which is find. It's like The Work and the Glory without endnotes. But that alone is not what I read fiction for.

The biggest draws for me are character and language, though plot can carry me through when those stagger. Seveneves's characters were interesting in their moments but I never grew to care about them between readings. The language is pedestrian. And the plot TOOK FOREVER.

So I took it back to the library. I couldn't be bothered to find my place again.

I'm bummed because I was looking forward to the destruction of the planet and the return of humans in 10,000 years. I've no doubt those would have been thilling passages, both viscerally and intellectually—and maybe if my bookmark had still been in place I would have skimmed forward—but figuring out where I left off was more work that I was willing to put in. Which is a bummer, because I still want to know what this is.

Also kicking around the house was Hail Mary (actually Project Hail Mary but the cover makes that Project easy to miss and it's a catchier title without it). Son #1 made son #2 and their mother read The Martian (he tried to make me, but I could never talk myself into it; I didn't doubt it was a fun read and a commercial concept, but the first page did not inspire confidence in language or character). Son #2 got Weir's third book from the library before our monthlong summer vacation and, I thought, finished it before we left. But no. So he got it back from the library and I decided to declare Martian bankruptcy and read this one instead. The cover copy was intriguing.

Although I don't think Weir's a terrific writer, I do think he has real prowess, conceptually. For instance, "The Egg" is not beautifully written, but it has stuck with me far more than just about any other afterlife fiction. And it's been made into So Many short film. So many. He has power.

Hail Mary commits most of the same sins as Seveneves (characters waxing expository in their dialogue when they should not, for instance) but it at least starts us off in media res. Granted, that means we end up with almost half the book in flashback, but he has layered reasons for that which I suppose count as "clever" or at least reasonable.

My biggest complaint with Hail Mary though is how predictable it is. I don't try to outsmart texts, but the ultimate solution to the dimming sun was obvious to me almost immediately. The idea that all the great minds of Earth wouldn't shoot off into space with this hypothesis already leading the back is ludicrous. Maybe one of the pleasures of (if you will) "popular fiction" is that the reader gets to feel smarter than the characters, but I don't take much pleasure in that.

Still, Project Hail Mary delivers one of my all-time favorite aliens. And not everything needs to be Great Literature. Have fun. Eat a potato chip.

In the end, I read about the same number of words from both Stephenson and Weir. They weighed about the same in terms of fact-sharing but one weighed more in terms of dumb fun. And thus the same amount of reading from two books results in one book added to unfinished books and one added to this year's books-read list:

109) Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, finished on October 29 

 about a week   

Unfinished book: Shit, Actually

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I didn't not finish this book because I wasn't enjoying it, not at all. It made me laugh consistently and Lindy is a smart and friendly guide through the movies she's writing about. I got this book from the library solely because I admire its title essay which I tweet out every other Christmas and anticipated these pleasures.

The reason I did not finish this book is because it included writing on a couple movies I intend to watch or rewatch and wanted to do so before getting her opinions. And also because my antipathy is so great re the American Pie universe that I couldn't bring myself to read that essay.

Her break-everything style can make it tough to tell whether she likes a movie or not until you get to the ratings at the end, but irreverence is fine, isn't it? Even if I think Back to the Future Part II is better than she says, it hardly deserves a hearty defense. They are movies. They'll be fine.

And you deserve a laugh.

Have you looked outside lately?

Unfinished Books: Your Movie Sucks

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Roger Ebert is a good writer. I'm not going to argue he's a great writer, but he's certainly quite good. And his stuff is fun to read. But honestly, I'm going to continue reading but not finishing his Great Movie series instead of the negative collections. They're fun, but they're a terrible menu. It's better to be excited about something new to see.

These reviews are of movies that came out fifteen to twenty years ago. If I hadn't been working in the home-movie industry during that period, I would remember even fewer of them. They are rightfully forgotten movies. Why dredge them back up? And since I'm a pretty educated movie goer, I've avoided most of these movies, so I can't even share in the glee of evisceration. Even those I did see, I can barely remember. Here's what I've seen:

The Dukes of Hazzard (maybe I saw it? pretty sure?)

Godzilla (all his criticisms are fair and correct but I disagree with his conclusions)

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (don't really remember it, but it was terrible---a greater disappointment given how much I loved the books)

The Master of Disguise (I'm ashamed I got suckered into seeing this by relatives)

Men in Black II (see Rush Hour 2)

Mr. Deeds (even Adam Sandler apologists don't like this one)

The Princess Diaries (I'm glad I'm not alone)

Rush Hour 2 (see Men and Black II)

Scooby-Doo (he wonders if Scooby-Doo cultists will like it; this cultist did not)

13 Ghosts (well, I watched it on fast-forward....)

The Time Machine (pretty sure I watched this and was disappointed)

The Tuxedo (pretty sure I did NOT watch this, but I might be wrong---how would I know?)

The Village (I liked this and will defend my like of it, but admit to all its faults and am in no rush to watch it again...but would like to again, someday, to see what I think)

That said, the opening part of the book---before the reviews that come alphabetically---was very much worth reading. More in-depth looks at Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, Chaos, and The Brown Bunny, including interactions with the filmmakers and such---those are worth reading. They include more about the value of criticism and the various results criticism can have.

The rest of the book is just slowing down on the freeway to look at carnage.

Unfinished Books: weird animals edition

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End of the Megafauna:
The Fate of the World's Hugest, Fiercest, and Strangest Animals

written by Ross D E MacPhee and illustrated be Peter Schouten

I read a short blurb about this book in Smithsonian which suggested the writing was dull and sloggish which images were CANNOT MISS. I agree about the images. I disagree about the text.

I devoured every image and caption in the book, enjoying paragraphs here and there of the main text. I enjoyed those so much (and learned so much) that I then went to the beginning and started reading from page one. Then someone hid the book and then it was returned to the library. But I stand by my assertion that this is a fascinating read, wonderfully illustrated. There is more to the world, friend, than dinosaurs.

The Tough Coughs as He Ploughs the Dough:
Early Writings and Cartoons by Dr. Seuss

edited by Richard Marschall

After reading a Dr Seuss biography this summer, I wanted to supplement with some of the good doctor's ACTUAL work, rather than chatter about it. So I made my way through one and two and most of this volume as well.

It consists of his cartooning and humor writing during and after college (and even a bit of the advertising). I read most of the book and enjoyed it. The only reason I'm not finishing it is because it's a library book and I'm prioritizing other library books before school starts. If I owned it, it would get finished. (And maybe I should own it---it's pretty cheap.)

I don't know that his stuff is as great as the best of his contemporaries (I think first of James Thurber and Robert Benchley), but it's solid. If you like humor-writing and cartooning from the first half of the previous century, it's worth checking out.

Some unfinished books to begin the year

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I've been giving myself permission not to finish books with regularity this year, from high art to low art. I wanted to plug these three books in particular though because I did enjoy them and because they have so much in common.

The first is essays on great animated films, the second on great science-fiction films, the third science fiction and fantasy fiction that holds up to rereading. With all three books I largely focussed on the movies/books I had already consumed. Book one gave me intelligent discourse. Book two's emphasis was more on Fun Facts which, of course, I also enjoyed. Book three was largely one woman's personal responses. And her responses made me continue this ongoing discussion I have with myself as to whether I should be a bigger rereader myself. Unlike Jo Walton, however, I do not read 500+ books a year. If I did, I think rereading would be much easier to fit in. I do agree with her that you haven't really read a book (or seen a movie, for that matter) until you have read it twice. I feel that lack a lot.

Book two was a big hit with my youngest son who has turned it into a personal must-watch list; I'm considering buying him a copy after I return these to the library.

In short, if you are interested in these types of movies/books, these are wonderful volumes to browse. If you are an expert in your own right, their editorial decisions will be delightful to rail against. Consider consider consider.

Unfinished Books: Fascinating 19th-century American Women

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Mrs. Sherlock Holmes was advertised to me by my library's website. As I was at the time a bit bored in my Devil in the White City reread (a book that utterly enraptured me the first time through), I put it on hold to arrive as school ended. This move was also influenced by why I was doing the reread: Lady Steed's book group was reading Devil and one of the members had complained to us how the book treated females. One female architect who was driven insane, and most of the other women ended up murdered and melted down. Not exactly a great work of inspiring feminism. A crackerjack female detective roughly contemporary to Devil sounded like just the thing.

The book arrived and, unfortunately, I went on a poetry^4567813 and comics^{123910111214151617181920} tear. So even though we ended up having the book for nine weeks --- practically the entire summer --- I never cracked it open. Sad face.

The second book, Trials of a Scold, was in some ways even more promising. A muckraker before there were muckrakers, a satirist in a young country, a woman without a clear place in society who decided to become a creature of letters, and who pissed off the rich and powerful in the process. She was eventually found guilty of being a "scold" using an old bit of English common law some lawyer dug up just to try and shut her up.

Unfortunatly, the book is a chronological mess and was tough to read. She's poor and unpublished then in the next paragraph she's famous and just off being convicted of being a scold. It's hard to follow and in the end, I decided the library could just have the book back. Let me know when the movie arrives. Sad face.

Unfinished book: Vivian Maier: A Photographer's Life and Afterlife by Pamela Bannos, professor of photography at Northwestern University

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[I'm not returning this book to the library yet, so it's feasible I'll go back and read the first three chapters and the chunks I skipped.]

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Let's start with a quotation from the author's note:

As I carefully tried to reconstruct Maier's scattered archive, my goal was always to recognize and give Maier agency within her own story. Here, as in my previous work, I sought to locate and reveal "hidden truths," in the process showing how changing stories and masked intentions can obscure history. In an age where truthfulness seems increasingly under attack, this objective seems all the more critical to me.

Essentially, since her discovery and death (which happened in that order, although almost simultaneously) this deliberately private woman has had her work, life, and legacy explained by a bunch of men with sufficient free time and funds to recreate her as a cultural phenomenon. Which she deserves, but this book took the time to really try to see her. The level of detectiving that went into this is impressive. THIS is the real first draft of history. (My complaints about the movie, which I liked, were valid and in fact not complainy enough. My enjoyment of the book holds steady.)

If you have any interest in Maier or her work, this is the right book to read. The story's gotten much more full, rich, and complicated since last you checked in on it.

Unfinished Books: Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?: The Epic Saga of the Bird that Powers Civilization

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I want to say up front that this is an Unfinished Book and NOT a Rejected Book, even though I will largely be complaining about its failures. I really did plan to finish the book even so, but its failings made it hard to keep picking up. Basically, after we got back from LA and I had access to other books, I just couldn't convince myself to keep reading even though I was fascinated by the subject matter.

The problem was that Lawler lacks a clear sense of where the interest in his stories lies. He'll drag along along through tangential trivia and skip lightly over challenging demanding aspect of the tale. This leads to frustration or boredom, back and forth between the two. Which is a shame because, as I said, there is much of interest here, historical, sociological, and pressingly contemporary.

I wonder if he just had a hard time making the leap to booklength nonfiction? I dunno. It was disappointing though.

I really wanted to learn about chickens.

(sadface)

Unfinished Books: The David Foster Wallace Reader

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I've always ignored David Foster Wallace. He wrote massive messes like Infinite Jest and since I didn't find him when I was into artsy messes, I just wasn't interested. Even after watching an excellent YouTube video of his water speech (not this video---the one I saw was animated, but alas I canna find it). But the water video, seen years ago, supplemented by the biopic trailer seen in a theater, meant that when I saw this 963pp READER on the library's NEW shelves, I picked it up. I first looked for "This Is Water" but it was MIA so I skimmed the nonfiction for something short. Found such a thing, but while turning there bumped into "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again"---a phrase I did not know was Wallace's. I started that instead, not knowing it was essentially a small book of itself.

I loved it. Besides being human and funny and sharp and well written &c, it captured everything I assume must be true about cruises and exactly why I don't ever want to go on one. Thank you very much, Mr Wallace. Now when someone invites me, I can just send them to you.

Then I did read some of the shorter works and yes they were nice. But my favorite pieces from the book where the longer essays---add to "A Supposedly Fun Thing" those about television and the Illinois State Fair. The only piece of fiction I made it through was a work from his undergrad days, a punchy drag about depression and other fun crimes our minds commit.

I've renewed the book twice which means when it's due in three days from this writing [ed. note: this time has now passed], I will have had it nine weeks. Most of those weeks consist of days I didn't touch the book, but realizing our end was drawing nigh, I've spent the last couple days downing as many pages as possible.

Among this cramming were pages I dogeared (don't tell!) because I want to steal them for pedagogical reasons. Specifically, elements of his own syllabi written for classes he taught. I would like to immediately implement many of his strategies, but here's a fact: what works for twelve students a semester is not practical nor practicable when one is responsible for 107 (this semester's count, divided over three classes). Le sigh.

Anyway, the point is maybe I should just buy myself a copy. Perhaps someday I'll even trust him enough to consider reading Infinite Jest. I rather doubt it, but maybe someday I'll get therapy and perhaps explain to myself how I changed from eager participant in the madness to strict apostate.

Unfinished Books Bonanza

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I'm giving up on a couple books I don't dislike but am willing to admit I will never finish. In the order of when I began them:

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood (begun ~8 months ago)

Alternating points of view. All beautifully written. All artificial. I hate to say this, but if it would just get to the killing instead of all this avoidance---well, I would probably have kept reading it. I enjoyed it while it was in my hands and under my eyes, but never think of it if it's anywhere else. Atwood is a terrific stringer of words, but sometimes she forgets the soul.

So yes: the interior life of the convicted murderess was exquisitely drawn. On the other hand, so much of her thinking was hidden for plotting reasons that it was, frankly, cheaty.

And yes: the doctor was a fun character as well. But I didn't see a lot of proof he was much more than a plot device.

And the locations! and the time period! and the cultures! All wonderful.

All a bit soulless.

All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood by Jennifer Senior (read during weeks with long interruptions)

I've heard Senior interviewed about this book(here for instance) and found a lot of meat and a lot to interest. Lady Steed read the book and absolutely loved it. I started it when she finished, but couldn't get it read before the library wanted it back. So I got in a 200-person line and waited, then checked it out again. I'd loved what I read in the first go. Not so much what came next. I'm afraid I'll never get to the joy part.

I think the problem is severalfold. But probably the big one is that although the book was sold as a digestion of the best new science available, like, say, NurtureShock, in fact science is more the color of the book than the content. It's largely anecdotal and citing who said it most interestingly. So while I don't mind all the quotations from essayists and memoirists and Margaret Mead, I thought this was supposed to be about, you know, the best new science available. It's not.

And now I have to return it again and I'm only halfway through and I don't think I'm going to get back in line. I enjoyed the book, sure, but it;s not nutritious enough to eat the whole thing. It's like . . . two liters of Reed's Ginger Beer. Closely related to real food, but still soda. Really great soda that I might well drink two liters of. But I really don't need to drink two liters of it. The interviews and the original NYTM articles be enough.

The Benchley Roundup

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Unifinished Book: Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

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Doctorow's book had so many people calling it both IMPORTANT and thrilling that I felt obliged to pick it up. Which I did, from the school library. It's been next to my bed for a couple years now and I never got more than a hundred twenty-some pages in. When I was reading it, I found it compelling (the politics---the tech manages to be both still-futuristic and already-dated), but when I set it down, I would forget all about it. So I'm calling it quits.

That said, it's still a book I would recommend to young readers who maybe don't get the references in this title and the main character's nom de hack w1n5t0n. Because it's a thriller, we send w1n5t0n to Miniluv before a hundred pages have passed, then let him loose to start forming The Brotherhood with his teenage buddies.

Politics I like. Exciting pacing. Even takes place in a well captured Bay Area. Surprised I didn't just power through? Me too. But I think the first-person narrator was part of the problem for me. Even though it's obligatory for YA lit these days, I'm a bit sick of it. And for a Nineteen Eighty-four pastiche, it's a bizarre choice. It limits how broken the protaganist can become which limits the amount of risk he can possibly undergo. In other words, the choice of first-person necessitates jetissoning a large measure of suspense and danger. In other words, it makes the novel much much safer. And that, I think, undercuts the politics and the pacing leaving a moral-of-the-story, characters I hopefully like totally love, and some good pizza recommendations for next time I'm in the Mission.

Not enough.

Unfinished Book: "The Tabernacle Bar" by Susan Palmer

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I received this novel in a big box of Mormon books from my wife's brother's wife's brother as he sloughed off the final remnants of his Mormon past. I don't know why I chose this one to start with. The box was filled with much more exciting volumes. But this one was slender and engaging and I slipped into it rather quickly.

Once I slipped out, however, I found it difficult to return.

Utah: The lapsed Mormon granddaughter inherits all her staunchly Mormon grandfather's property and takes out a mortgage on it to buy the local bar of the title. She sleeps with a couple dudes and an escaped hippie girl falls in love with her brother and this and that. The town is a sort of fictionalized Logan and, you know, everything about the book is fine. But just fine. It has that sort of snide this is what Mormons are really like tone we've grown tired of from too much use by too many exMos. In other words, as much as I liked the first half of the book, I find it impossible to believe that the second half will provide me with anything more.

Perhaps that is cynical or unkind, but---remember!---according to Tim Parks!---it's okay not to finish books.

I feel like this book and I are close enough to still hang out together on Facebook.

But I might wait for it to friend me first.

Unfinished Books: "Hooligan: A Mormon Boyhood" by Douglas Thayer

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I've recently started hanging with the Thayer cult, but I'll never be a full-fledged member. Because I found this book intolerably boring. I've had it since its release and I'm still not thirty pages in. So I'm calling it quits.

I'm not sure why I care so little about Thayer's childhood or the Provo of that era. After all, didn't I read and reread the Great Brain books as a child? Isn't this basically a realer and more recent version therof?

I guess. Whatever. I don't care.

It's weird though because I know it's Zarahemla's bestselling book and I know Thayer can spin a good yarn. So why do I find it so tedious and unreadable?

I don't know. And it's stayed by my bedside for years in hopes I would find the resources to give it a more serious shot.

But I have failed. So I'm going to pass on the book to someone else who may like it. My dad's the obvious choice, but the last time I gave him a book I was certain he would like, it didn't work out so well.