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 Last
night I read an essay called "Up,
Simba," written during the 2000 Presidential campaign, originally
published in abbreviated form by Rolling Stone and now available
in its entirety among the contents of David Foster Wallace's new collection,
Consider the Lobster.
Had someone suggested, as recently as yesterday's lunch, that seventy-nine
pages of journalism about a losing candidate (John
McCain) from an six-years-past election would excite my interest in
politics, even briefly, and (more unlikely still) inspire me to walk directly
from the couch to a desk chair and start typing sentences for strangers
to read, I would have confidently assumed that said "someone" was either
a) drunk; b) naïve; or c) confusing me for a look-alike who treats the
front section of newspapers as more than a protective coating for Sports
and Arts. And yet here we are....(read
more)
Smart books are good for your brain. Funny, smart books provide
valuable nutrition to other parts of your body, too.
The Brief
and Frightening Reign of Phil
by George Saunders
TBaFRoP has garnered many a comparison to Animal
Farm. Fair enough: they're both novella-length, political fables written
by men named George. But Saunders is so much funnier — and more playful.
If you haven't read his work, here's a perfect place to start.
Oh, the buzz of reading great new books before they hit store
shelves. Every now and then I consider what it might someday be
like to lose prepublication access to books, and I shudder. I make
myself think about something else.
Willful Creatures
by Aimee Bender
On the surface, most of the stories in Willful Creatures shouldn't
ring true at all. But think of a roller coaster: Bender's magical flourishes
crank you up, up, up along the tracks until, suddenly, break-necking back
toward reality, a single line tears your stomach out. The ride gets addictive
— mundane and surreal, fantastic and familiar, one rush leaves you clamoring
for the next.
Game
Time
by Roger Angell
Once I lived for ten weeks in a van with a friend, traveling from major
league park to major league park. Another summer brought me to sixty-three
minor league parks. Before all that, it was Roger
Angell who got me hooked on baseball. Anything he writes about the
sport is worth reading. Game
Time, a new collection gathering forty years of his most memorable
essays, is an ideal place to start.
Books I've recommended to friends at one time or another. Some,
like Bel
Canto, I'd recommend to just about anyone. Even you. (It doesn't
sound like the kind of novel you generally read, maybe, but that
was my first thought too and since the minute I picked it up I haven't
stopped raving.)
Bel
Canto
by Ann Patchett
As Patchett's fourth novel opens, fifty-seven men, eighteen
terrorists, and one remarkable opera singer begin their new life behind
the closed doors of the vice presidential mansion. Inspired by the
four-month-long, 1996 Peruvian hostage crisis, Bel Canto "is
ninety-eight percent fiction," the author says. Roxane Coss was her
idea....
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What I've Been Reading Lately
Updated on August 7, 2007
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I didn't read as a child, unless you count the Sports section of
the Boston Globe. Maybe this explains my late-blooming interest
in children's books.
James
and the Giant Peach
by Roald Dahl
Magic green pills spill, accidentally, onto the ground beneath
a peach tree. A peach appears overnight, the only fruit the tree
has ever produced; by morning, it's swollen to the size of a houseboat,
and soon enough James Henry Trotter is climbing aboard for the ride
of his life. If John Lennon had written a full-length children's
story instead of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," this would be
it. Even the ending is true: The English orphan boy finds happiness
in a home near his magical friends in New York's Central Park. I
love this book: the story, the drawings, the characters, and most
of all the adventure.
 "Heaven,
such as it is, is right here on earth. Behold: my revelation:
I stand at the door in the morning, and lo, there is a newspaper,
in sight like unto an emerald. And holy, holy, holy is the
coffee, which was, and is, and is to come. And hark, I hear
the voice of an angel round about the radio saying, "Since
my baby left me I found a new place to dwell." And lo, after
this I beheld a great multitude, which no man could number,
of shoes. And after these things I will hasten unto a taxicab
and to a theater, where a ticket will be given unto me, and
lo, it will be a matinee, and a film that doeth great wonders.
And when it is finished, the heavens will open, and out will
cometh a rain fragrant as myrrh, and yea, I have an umbrella."
—from Take the Cannoli by Sarah
Vowell
 "Emotions,
in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't
believe in 'sadness,' 'joy,' or 'regret.' Maybe the best proof
that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies
feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid
emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, 'the
happiness that attends disaster.' Or: 'the disappointment
of sleeping with one's fantasy.' I'd like to show how 'intimations
of mortality brought on by aging family members' connects
with 'the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age.' I'd
like to have a word for 'the sadness inspired by failing restaurants'
as well as for 'the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.'"
—from Middlesex by
Jeffrey Eugenides
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Among other responsibilities at Powell's, Dave interviews
authors for the web site and contributes an occasional column
to our blog. Sometimes without realizing
he's doing it he makes popping sounds with his mouth. It's either a nervous tic
or a secret language he speaks with Fup,
we're not entirely sure. Ask him yourself.
