He's back! Thoughts on books read in the first month of 2014

Books Read --

1.  Jar of Fools, Jason Lutes

2.  Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

3.  Stalin’s Ghost, Martin Cruz Smith

4.  Blue Heaven, C.J. Box

5.  Iron Council, China Mieville

6.  The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker, Stanley Crouch 

7.  The Astral, Kate Christensen

8.  The Silver Dream, Neil Gaiman, Michael and Mallory Reaves

9.  Ten Years in the Tub, Nick Hornby

10. Below Zero, C.J. Box

11. The Yankee Years, Joe Torre & Tom Verducci

12. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling

13. The Rapture of the Nerds, Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross

Books Bought --

Black is the Color, Julia Gfroer

I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, Alan Bradley

Death of Kings, Bernard Cornwell

March (Book One), John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell

The Invention of Wings, Sue Monk Kidd

Orfeo, Richard Powers

Andrew's Brain, E. L. Doctorow

My recent reading suggests three ledes for this first post of 2014. I cannot decide between them so here they all are:

Lede 1 -- I have shamelessly stolen Nick Hornby's format for his column in Believer magazine, listing both books read and books bought. I will neither be as funny nor as insightful as Nick, but I like the format. My intentions are clearly influenced by reading his wonderful collection Ten Years in the Tub.

Lede 2 -- I plan to start January and each month thereafter with a truly great book.  The rest of the month may be nothing but plonck, but among the 100-plus books I read in 2014 there will be 12 that are dependable. Starting with the best of the best, Dicken's Great Expectations.

Lede 3 -- January is a month when there are few, if any, notable new releases (although that was far from true this year), so I like to work through a reading pile that's been growing taller throughout 2013. This consists of an author or series that I am trying to work my way through. Harry Potter, all the books by C.J. Box. That sort of thing.

And it was a good month if for no other reason than I finally read Great Expectations. I am surprised as you, Dear Reader, that I had never read this classic before. I consider Dickens the greatest English novelist (I want to say writer, but then what do I do with Shakespeare?) and Great Expectations is clearly one of his great novels, if not the greatest.

Everything that makes Dickens a joy to read is present here. The humor (and if you don't find humor in Dickens you aren't reading him closely), the numerous plot strands that all unexpectedly convergence into a single, satisfying whole and the vivid secondary characters.  What other writer's minor characters so dominate the landscape of our literature and imagination? Here we have Miss Havisham, the convict Abel Magwitch, Joe the blacksmith, Mr. Jaggers and the pompous Pumblechook.

Ten Years in the Tub is the other book that I would most recommend to other readers. Hornby makes me laugh and he sends me scrambling for a pen so I can scribble down another title or writer I want to read. If you're not familiar with his long-running column in the Believer pick this book up. I have read two previous collections and I didn't mind one bit re-reading some columns for the second or third time.

Blue Heaven by C.J. Box was difficult to read. Not because of the writing, but because two children were in jeopardy and that caused me no end of anxiety. Blue Heaven is a one-off and doesn't feature Box's recurring character, the Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince seems to me to be the book where J.K. Rowling finally learns to writ. It's the best book in the series, yet also the penultimate book, which tells you a great deal about how lukewarm I am about this series.

Science fiction often relies on conventions or conceits that assume a pre-existing familiarity on the reader's part. That's especially true of Iron Council by China Mieville and The Rapture of the Nerds by Cory Doctorow and Charlie Stross.

After completing these books I thought I'd enjoy them more if I immediately went back and read them again, but who wants to do that? I like Stross and Mieville -- just not these books.

The Astral isn't Kate Christensen's best book.  I'd recommend The Great Man, which won the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award.

The Silver Dream is young adult novel.  It's the second in a series that I find mildly entertaining. 

Martin Cruz Smith's Stalin's Ghost takes a long time to take off. Honestly, unless you just want to read all his books, I'd give this a pass.

And that's also true for Jar of Fools, a graphic novel by Jason Lutes. 

I reserve my greatest disappointment for two works of non-fiction: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker, a biography of the jazz great by Stanley Crouch and The Yankee Years by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci.

Crouch's book left me wanting to read a biography of Charlie Parker. It's an extended rift on many topics, including the influence of Kansas City jazz, but Parker is often off the stage entirely.

Baseball reads. Normally. This book doesn't. It's rather odd. Torre appears to be the co-author, but he appears in the book in the third person and is quoted, rather than just telling his story. Still, a Yankee fan is going to enjoy this peak behind the pin-striped curtain.

Miéville's novels are complex narratives, rich with ideas

Book 62: The City and The City by China Miéville
Book 65: Embassytown by China Miéville

Complex, challenging novels that are occasionally infuriating and always entertaining is how I would characterize the novels of British writer China Miéville.

These are not the pared-down, movie-script-as-a-novel books that Michael Critchton cranked out in his last few years. Rather, these are complex novels that reward the patient reader with a rich story that strikes the rare balance between ideas and action.

The City & The City -- co-winner of the 2010 Hugo Award with Paolo Bacigalupi for the delicious The Windup Girl --  is a noir-ish detective story in a science fiction setting. Yet because Miéville is faithful to both genres the novel never feels like a gimmick.

The novel begins as a conventional police procedural. A body is found, dumped near the ramps of a skateboard park. "Nothing is still as the death are still," observes Police Inspector Tyador Borlú́́, who is called in to investigate the murder.

Those opening pages -- a body unceremoniously dumped by a skateboard park, the police soberly looking on -- is the last time, the only time, that this novel is on familiar ground. Now it gets strange.

Borlú́́ is an inspector in the city of Besź́́̀́́el, which shares the same physical space, the same geography, as the city of Ul Qoman. 

Miéville never explains why these two cities overlap, we're only told they do.  It first appears as if there's been some quirky dimensional overlay from out of the pages of Marvel Comics.  But that's not what's happening here.

Instead, it appear that the residents of Besź́́̀́́el and Ul Qoman have intentionally decided that one city is now really two.  It's as if all the residents of a New York borough woke up one morning and decided that based on style of dress, the make of car, the architecture of a house, or the presence of certain colors, that their neighbor doesn't fully exist.

You can see them, but you try real hard not to. You can even visit this other city, but to do so, to visit a neighbor who literally lives across the street, requires that you pass through a checkpoint and a wear badge that identifies you as a visitor.  And once you've done that you can't simply walk back across the street to your own home -- you have to pass through the checkpoint again to do that.

To complicate matters, part of the landscape seems to belong only to Besź́́̀́́el, part to Ul Qoman. Some overlaps and other areas aren't a part of either city.

And to complicate matters even more, all of this, this separation, is enforced by a shadowy presence known as the Breach.

This separation between the two cities is important to Borlú́́ because it appears the young woman was killed in one city, her body dumped in another. In the course of his investigation, Borlú́́ learns that the woman may have been murdered because she uncovered evidence of a second shadowy group of people living in the interstice of the two cities, a shadowy group that may be a threat to the Breach.

Miéville challenges the reader by not explaining everything -- either the words he's coined (both novels cry out for a glossary) or the reason that the two cities exist as they do. 

Embassytown is just as challenging, just as potentially confusing.  In this novel, we find ourselves on a far distant world where humans have established a small outpost, an embassy. The world's sentient life form, the Ariekei, have two mouths. 

As a result, the Ariekei hear human speech, but are unable to perceive it as language. Nor are they capable of perceiving a normal human as an intelligent creature.

To communicate with the Ariekei, or the Hosts as they are known to the human residents of Embassytown, humans rely on the "Ambassadors," human twins, doppels, that share an empathetic connection and who separately represent each of the Hosts' two mouths. The Ambassadors are bred in Embassytown.

A crisis erupts when an Ambassador arrives from off world.  This Ambassador is not a twin, but two distinct humans, and his/his speech is instantly addictive to the Ariekei.

Both races embark on efforts to free the Ariekei from this addiction. The solution found by the Hosts involves a severe form of self-mutilation that leaves them free of addiction, but unable to speak. The solution found by the human involves teaching the Ariekei to lie.

Further explanations elude me.  It's all tied up with the idea that for the Ariekei language is literal. And it has to do with a small number of humans who literally become part of the Ariekei language. As a little girl our narrator becomes a simile in the Hosts language.

Describing Embassytown is as a challenging as reading it. It is a complex novel that demands multiple readings to reach a full understanding of what Miéville is trying to achieve -- if that's even possible.

One reading, or many, Miéville's books are among the most provocative to appear in years.  His novels, and the ideas within them, defy the casual read. Yet despite the complexity -- or perhaps because of it -- Miéville also produces a gripping narrative of unparalleled richness.

Introducing Jerry Robinson and China Miéville

Book 32: Jerry Robinson, Ambassador of Comics by N.C. Christopher Couch

I've spent more than 50 years reading and collecting comics, yet I did not know about the work of Jerry Robinson. 

There are some sound reasons for my ignorance: Robinson's best work in the field took place well before I ever held a comic in my hands. Plus, he worked for D.C. and, well, I've always made mine Marvel.

Still, I should have known. Robinson is the man who created the Joker. That's right, one of the greatest super villains of all time, sprang from the pen and the imagination of Jerry Robinson. He also created Robin, the Boy Wonder; borrowing his name and much of his attire from Robin Hood.  

Those are impressive claims to fame in the world I inhabit. Yet there's so much more to Robinson's story as N.C. Christopher Couch makes clear in Jerry Robinson Ambassador of Comics, a lush book filled with sample after sample of Robinson's work.

After working alongside Bob Kane -- yeah, that Bob Kane, the man who created Batman -- and later for Stan Lee -- yeah, that Stan Lee -- Robinson left the comic book industry to illustrate books and magazines. Still later he launched his own comic strip and, still later, he became a successful editorial cartoonist.

But wait, there's more.  Robinson played a pivotal role in the campaign to give Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel credit for their role in creating Superman.  He became involved in human rights campaigns on behalf of jailed cartoonists overseas and helped international cartoonist find an audience in America. And he also became a historian of the comic book industry.

Robinson's body of work is impressive.  He's impressive.  A talented, creative, compassionate man. Did I say he created the Joker?

Book 33: Kraken by China Miéville

I am given to reading books that won literary awards . . . the Booker, the National Book Award, the Pulitzer, the Hugo.  It gives me a sense of the direction of current literature and introduces me to new writers.

Such was the case with China Miéville who shared the 2010 Hugo Award with Paolo Bacigalupi.  Bacigalupi for The Windup Girl. Miéville for The City, and The City. 

I haven't read that award-winning work by Miéville, but I did snag a copy of Kraken, his newest work.  And now I understand something of what the fuss is about. If The City, and The City is on par with Kraken (and I suspect it is) then Miéville is going to be around for a long time to come, and my consumption of science fiction is going to reach levels not seen in decades.

Kraken is a fast-paced novel that mixes elements of mystery, science fiction and fantasy.  A giant squid, tank and all, has disappeared from London's Natural History Museum.  As one characters says don't focus on the how, but on the why and the who. Because someone is determined to set off the apocalypse.

Our inadvertent hero is Billy Harrow, a curator at the museum.  Billy knows things he doesn't know he knows.  The Krakenists, a small cult that worship the giant squid, believe he is their prophet because he has laid hands on the squid, their god.

Billy and an exile from the squid cult (can't believe I am writing that) set off to find the kraken and forestall the end of the world. Those who come to their aide and those who oppose their efforts are a thrilling array of characters that testify to Miéville's imagination.  One murderous pair of villains and a enchanted gang leader known as The Tattoo rank among literature's creepiest supernatural characters since Dracula.

Miéville exhibits vast talent in Kraken, a tour de force of the fantastical, conjuring Lovecraft and Stross and Fringe and yet quite unlike anything else in the field today.