On Djibouti, Unbroken, Room, Lord of Misrule and Moonlight Mile

Book 99: Djibouti by Elmore Leonard

Detroit, Vegas, Miami, even Oklahoma, but Djibouti?

The setting is off in Elmore Leonard's newest novel. Way off.

And as a result, nothing really works. Not the snappy dialogue. Or the oh-so cool characters. This one wrong note -- a really loud note -- reverberates throughout the entire symphony.

We find ourselves in Djibouti following an Oscar-winning filmmaker and her assistant who have arrived to do a documentary on pirates. But at some point the novel becomes a story about an American-born al qaeda sympathizer who plans to blown up a freighter. Soon after the clinker becomes a clunker.

Sorry, Dutch, but Oklahoma should remain your most exotic setting.

Book 100: Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

Critics everywhere should thank Laura Hillenbrand. She just made the job of assembling our list of The Best Books of 2010 easier.

Unbroken has secured a place on my list without breaking a sweat.

Unbroken is the story of Louie Zamperini. A California native, Zamperini was the highest American finisher in the 5,000 meter run at the Berlin Olympics. His Olympic dreams are ended when, with the outbreak of World War II, he finds himself on the crew of a bomber in the Pacific.

Zamperini's plane is shot down. He and the pilot survive harrowing weeks on a disintegrating raft only to become prisoners of the Japanese. His life as a prisoner of war is marked by brutality, terror and humiliation.

Even when the war ends, and Zamperini is freed, his struggles are not over. Plagued by nightmares and a deep-rooted anger, Zamperini finds consolation in alcohol. He drifts from job to job and his marriage is falling apart.

Enter a young Billy Graham. Strong-armed into attending Graham's tent revival by his wife, Zamperini remembers a promise he made to God were he to survive the war. The sub-title captures the essence of Zamperini's experience -- survival, resilience and redemption.

Were it a movie of the week, it would seem too hackneyed, too earnest, too predictable to be true. But in Hillenbrand's hands Zamperini's story is none of these things. Instead, it soars. Hillenbrand is easily one of the finest storytellers, working in non-fiction, today and Unbroken is easily among the best books of this or any other year.

Book 101: Room by Emma Donoghue

I was skeptical. There were too many glowing reviews, too many bookstore clerks telling me "I loved this book," too many friends asking, "Have you read it?"

The answer is an enthusiastic yes, I have read it. And I love this book, too.

Here's what I admire most about it -- Donoghue has created a work of singular invention. There aren't a hand full of writers who could pull off this high wire act. The wise wouldn't try.

Room is a powerful work of the imagination and a tribute to the power of a mother's love to nurture a child amid a daunting and horrific situation.

Book 102: Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon

Lord of Misrule is a horse. One of many that appears in this award-winning novel about a down-at-its-heels West Virginia racetrack. It is no mistake that Gordon's novel draws its title from a horse named after the individual selected to rule over the annual Christmas Feast of Fools.

With each section, framed by a horse race, we are introduced to new characters and to new horses, who are also important characters in this novel of greed and ambition and hope. Lord of Misrule is a finely layered novel of nuance and observation (of people and horses). It manages to be both elegant and coarse in the way of horses and horse people.

I greatly enjoy, and value, novels that take me into a unexplored world. I have watched horse races at Keeneland in Lexington, Kentucky. Bet on their outcome. Taken my lunch -- slumming, really -- in the track kitchen. And I have always known that immediately at hand, and yet light years distant, was another world.

Gordon shares that world with the reader in Lord of Misrule.

I have yet to read the other four books that made the shortlist for the National Book Award. Even once I have read those books I may not have a clear idea of which book, among the five, was the best.

I do know that Lord of Misrule is a deserving winner for its authenticity and the quality of its writing.

Book 103: Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane

Thank you, Dennis Lehane. For years I have requested that you write a sequel to your novels featuring Kenzie and Gennaro. I liked Mystic River, but Shutter (Shudder?) Island and The Given Day felt flat.

Now, in Moonlight Mile, not only are Kenzie and Gennaro back, but they revisit their most famous case -- the disappearance of Amanda McCready from Gone Baby Gone.

It is more than I dared ask for, and the book does not disappoint. It is a terrific read because of your sense of setting and the characters that populate this novel. Kenzie and Gennaro (now Kenzie, herself) are intriguing characters filled with doubt and imperfections and moral certainties they find troubling.

Moonlight Mile can be read as a finale for these two characters. I hope that is not the case, but if it is, you have left me satisfied as a reader and a fan.

Is The Reversal Connelly's best book?

Book 98: The Reversal by Michael Connelly

Is The Reversal Michael Connelly's best book?

If it is -- and it may well be -- that's saying something. Connelly has been at the top of his game a long time. Most writers lost their snap this many books into their career, but Connelly keeps it fresh.

The Reversal features Connelly's two leading characters -- Harry Bosch, the tough-as-nails L.A. homicide detective, and Mickey Haller, the defense attorney whose is office is the backseat of his Lincoln.

The novel is part courtroom drama, part police procedural. An appeals court has kicked the conviction of Jason Jessup, who has been in prison for 24 years for the murder of a 12-year-old girl. A DNA sample on the victim's dress doesn't belong to Jessup.

Soon Jessup is headed back to L.A. to face a new trial. Haller is enlisted to serve as a special prosecutor in the case. In turn, he recruits Bosch to serve as special investigator.

On its surface, there isn't anything to the story you haven't read before or seen in the movies or on a bad TV show. But Connelly, with great pacing, vivid scenes and characters who jump off the page, transcends the genre. This is a book, a story, that compels you to read it and it's a damn gripping read.

The question remains: Is The Reversal Connelly's best book? At least, until his next book is released the answer is yes.
.

Leavy reveals the man behind the myth in The Last Boy

Book 96: The Last Boy, Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood by Jane Leavy

Bed wetter. Womanizer. Alcoholic.

Mickey Mantle was all these things. He was also -- for all too brief a time -- the finest baseball player in the game. No one could hit the ball farther or harder than the kid from Commerce. He ran the bases faster than anyone and, if he was a so-so fielder, he ran down balls that others could only dream of reaching.

His radiant smile, chiseled body, tousled blonde hair and an easy, unforced modesty that led him to keep his head down as he rounded the bases after another home run, made him one of the most popular men in the game, among both players and the fans. Mickey was an icon.

Jane Leavy explores the reality behind the icon in her book, The Last Boy. This is a much different biography than the one she wrote on Sandy Koufax in 2002. That was an elegant book, but Koufax was an elegant man. The Last Boy is a coarser work, because Mantle could be, was, a coarse man.

Leavy's biography of the Oklahoma great invokes laughter in one passage and sadness in the next. She is unsparing in serving up details that strip away the facade created by Yankee publicists and an uncritical press, allowing us to see Mantle as man rather than myth. Fragile. Vulnerable. Crude.

If The Last Boy is not as fine a work as Sandy Koufax, it is a necessary one. Leavy allows us to see all of Mantle's greatness and all his faults. In doing so, she leaves us with the portrait of a man that we can continue to admire, yet also pity.

Book 97: Worth Dying For by Lee Child

Bad guys. Really bad guys. A cowed Nebraska farming community. A half-dozen hoods from Las Vegas. And Jack Reacher.

This isn't a spoiler, but Reacher walks away in the end. The bad guys aren't so lucky.

That's all you need to know about Worth Dying For. That and it's a quick, fun read.

Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl is a sensation

My recent reading encompasses three books that range from disappointing to the sensational with something squarely in the middle.

Book 93: Our Kind of Traitor by John le Carre

The middle ground is occupied by John le Carre, who is still writing about Russians. But these days, the Russians are international criminals rather than espionage agents. That distinction alone means that Our Kind of Traitor will emerge as a disappointment to some readers.

One wonders why le Carre, in these recent books, has not returned to the past. Surely there are more stories to tell of Smiley and Karla or, at least, men and women similar to these two adversaries that lived among le Carre's best work.

One wonders, but one knows the answer. Le Carre's conscience leads him to write about the times we inhabit now. Times that he finds so lacking in moral fiber or integrity. He has, for example, explored the baseness and greed that motivate the pharmaceutical giants. In Our Kind of Traitor he casts an angry eye upon governments and politicians who have grown cozy with international criminals.

Our Kind of Traitor is an entertaining work. Le Carre's skills as a storyteller have been finely honed through years of writing. It is amazing to observe how much of this novel is confined to dialogue amid ill lit rooms inside safe houses and yet le Carre creates a skein of tension that slowly builds to a conclusion that, if not entirely satisfying, is entirely true to its tale.

Book 94: Bloody Crimes, The Chase for Jefferson Davis and the Death Pageant for Lincoln's Corpse by James Swanson

Sadly, because I so enjoyed Swanson's Manhunt about the 12-day search for Lincoln's killer, I find Bloody Crimes a bloody disappointment.

The two stories, Lincoln's death pageant and the search for Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy, do not work well in parallel.

The story of Lincoln's death pageant is a dry recitation of logistics that could have been summarized in a magazine article. The search for Davis is a compelling story that warranted its own book.

Book 95: The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

The Windup Girl is a sensation. Co-winner of the 2010 Hugo Award, it it one of the best science fiction stories I have read in years and certainly ranks among the best first novels -- of any genre -- that I have read.

Comparisons have been made to the early work of William Gibson. Those comparisons are apt. Like Gibson, Bacigalupi takes the stuff of today and envisions a future so close to hand that the reader can almost touch it. And in creating this future, Bacigalupi fashions a story that is visionary and immediate and frightening.

We can smell the stink of tomorrow.

The stink from over-ripe durians rotting on a vendor's cart. And the stink from greedy men unleashing genetic havoc upon an unsuspecting earth.

The Windup Girl is set in Krung Thep (Bangkok). The earth's rising seas are held at bay by makeshift dikes. Chesires, a breed of genetically manipulated cats that wink in and out of one's vision, prowl the dark alleys. Men and women fear blister rust and genehacked weevils. Seed banks are guarded as we once guarded the gold of Fort Knox.

Bacigalupi weaves a wondrous tale of competing interests. Virtually everyone is corrupt and everyone is scrabbling just to remain a live. The narrative is gripping, but it is the future -- gene ripped and gene hacked and a little mad --which Bacigalupi envisions that is so compelling.

That and the windup girl of the title. Emiko is a creche grown member of the New People. Not human, better in most ways. She's fighting for her life and dignity against overwhelming odds. The windup girls makes for an unlikely hero in this gripping story of a future that's feels all to near.

The Lacuna, The 5th Inning and Fledgling

Book 90: The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

"Who be ye?" asks a voice at the conclusion of Barbara Kingsolver's novel, The Lacuna.

"People . . . might want to look back on those who labored and birthed the times they have inherited. But maybe that's wrong, and already we'll be a graveyard of weeds they won't want to visit. You, I mean to say. The times you have inherited. I wonder that: Who be ye?”

The voice belongs to Violet Brown, the conscience of The Lacuna and the stenographer of Harrison Shepherd, whose life story is at the heart of this sweeping novel.

Violet's question is posed to those men responsible for the Red Scare, the destruction of Shepherd's reputation and livelihood and, ultimately, his death through an apparent suicide. But Kingsolver is working on more than one level and Mrs. Brown's question is also aimed at those of us who inhabit today's fractious political landscape. A landscape marred by stridency and polarization and where half-truths and fabrications are presented by intelligent men and women as truths in order to gain political advantage.

The politics of fear reign today just as they did in the time period in which Kingsolver's novel is set.

Shepherd's life story, told largely through his dairies, which Mrs. Brown has saved from destruction, is all the more compelling because of the parallels with today. Shepherd is tainted by affiliations -- the painter Diego Rivera and Russian revolutionary Lev Trotsky -- that for him are about love and loyalty, rather than ideology.

It makes no difference. None of those guilty of Shepherd's destruction care about his guilt or innocence or his motives. He is an all to easy means to advance their shabby political ambitions. No more.

And today? People would do well to take Kingsolver's question to heart. Who be ye?


Book 91: The 5th Inning by E. Ethelbert Miller

The 5th Inning by E. Ethelbert Miller is a surprisingly powerful memoir for such a slender work. A few quiet hours on a Sunday afternoon is all is takes to dispatch this book. Yet, Miller's wisdom and insight linger longer.

The 5th Inning takes its title, and much of its essence, from baseball's fifth inning. After five, the game becomes official. Miller is saying his life is now in the books. It could end now. Or run the full nine innings. Or -- although Miller doesn't believe so -- go into extra innings.

Whatever the outcome, Miller, a D.C.-based poet, seems content with the outcome. Whether it's a game shortened by the vicissitudes of life or allowed to run its full course, Miller has played it well and is satisfied with the final score.

He writes about fatherhood, his lovers and wives. He is aware of how difficult it is simply to be a good father, a good husband, a good man. In a few brief pages, we read of a man, and poet, coming to terms with his life, and death.

What's rare about this book is that Miller approaches his mortality with satisfaction and a sense that he has does his best and can go to his rest with contentment and a measure of satisfaction.

Book 92: Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler

One of the authors that Miller mentions in passing in The Fifth Inning is Butler, who, like Miller, is African American.

Fledgling is Butler's final book. She died, in a fall, soon after this novel was completed. Fledgling was clearly intended to be the first in a series of novels. It is just as clearly the work of an author at the top of her game.

It is an exquisite novel -- well-told and provocative. Butler has always skillfully used the science fiction genre to probe the human condition. Here she elevates the vampire novel to a level that is profound, yet filled with horror and mystery, too.

Shori, the young vampire of the novel's title, is a compelling, complex and sympathetic character who carries the novel with extraordinary vigor.

Butler's untimely death is sad, not only because we have lost an engaging and thoughtful presence, but because we have also lost her stories and the insights they provoked.

On Bob Dylan in America and Think of a Number

Book 88: Think of a Number by John Verdon

Think of a Number by John Verdon begins with a puzzle that could test the deductive skills of the great Sherlock Holmes and ends with the movie equivalent of a car chase.

Whether Verdon got lazy or is simply making a naked pitch to the Hollywood rainmakers, the disappointing finale to his debut novel derails a promising and intriguing beginning. It's as if Alfred Hitchcock directed three quarters of a film only to let Wes Craven finish it.

The puzzle is presented to Dave Gurney, a retired NYPD homicide detective, by a frightened college chum he hasn't seen in decades. Gurney's erstwhile pal has received a mysterious letter that invites him to "think of any number . . . and see how well I know your secret."

He thinks of a number, and when he opens a second envelope tucked inside the first, it appears the letter writer does know him well, because the number that came to mind also appears on the printed page.

The letter writer pulls off this bit of conjuration again and that mysterious ability, combined with some decidedly threatening poems, ratchets up the suspense.

Which only heightens when Gurney's college friend is brutally murdered. Gurney's investigation uncovers a series of murders that appear connected, yet no visible tie exists.

It's a creepy and altogether satisfying mystery -- how did the letter writer know that number? -- until Verdon brings the reader and Gurney and the letter writer together for a conclusion that does not do justice to the thriller he has fashioned so expertly to this point.

Book 89: Bob Dylan in America by Sean Wilentz

Sean Wilentz's book on Bob Dylan caught me by surprise, pleasantly so. I was familiar with Wilentz's work as a historian, including his biography of Andrew Jackson that is part of the American Presidents series.

But I hesitated to buy this book. I wondered what Wilentz knew about Dylan and his music, or music at all for that matter. I was like a school child who doesn't realize that his teacher has a life outside the classroom.

My hesitation was unfounded. Wilentz has been a Dylan fan for decades. He has an impressive knowledge of Dylan's work based on many hours of listening and his understanding of music approaches that of a performer. Yet, ultimately, it is Wilentz's grounding in history that makes this book so special.

Bob Dylan in America explores the antecedents and influences upon Dylan, the performer and songwriter. He charts a journey that takes us from Aaron Copland to the murder behind the song Delia, from the shape note movement in 19th Century America to the life story of Blind Willie McTell.

Chock with footnotes and rich in research, Bob Dylan in America's greatest strength lies in Wilentz's gifts as a storyteller. Part biography, part musical criticism, part history, Bob Dylan in America is ultimately a perceptive and powerful argument of Bob Dylan as an gifted musician who defined America even as America defined the musician.

Fan Boy on Kate Akinson's newest opus

Book 87: Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson

Hey, Kate. Hope you are well. It’s me – fan boy #1.

About that. I’d like to give myself a promotion. I want to be Fan Boy #1².

Yeah, that it . . . Fan Boy to the Second Power!

You rock. I rock. We rock!

Where is this excess of enthusiasm coming from?, you ask. And I answer, Kate, I just finished your most recent opus, Started Early, Took My Dog.

How do you do it? Seriously, that’s not a rhetorical question.

How do you do it?

I am so, like, gob smacked. A nice little mystery, all these interwoven story lines, a riveting narrative and vivid characters. (That’s apparently not a sentence, but I will let it stand.)

About your characters: I liked Courtney the best in this novel. The four-year-old. She reminded me a little of Regina from When Will There Be Good News.

Seriously, Time Magazine is putting Jonathan Franzen on its cover and, well, Jonathan is an OK guy, but they should give out a pair of scissors with each book. (Because his characters are cardboard cut-outs. Ha Ha, just a little literary humor. LOL.)

A little exposition, a pinch of description, a run of dialogue and your characters pop – POP – off the page.

Great title, too.

And, Kate, one more thing. Keep this between us. Our little secret. Your books make me laugh (that’s not the secret), but they make me cry too. I know it’s all paper and ink and fairy dust, but there are times I’m crying and laughing at the same time. Compelling is what I'd call it.

So . . . loved the book. Love you. (I kept flipping to the back of the book to look at your picture on the dust jacket. Even I find that a little creepy.)

OK, Fan Boy #1² needs to close. If you’re reading this, you’re not writing and I want you writing. I'm giddy just thinking about your next book.

Politics & Prose co-founder dies

Carla Cohen, a co-owner of Politics & Prose in Washington, D.C., died today. You can read her obituary in the Washington Post.

The Post describes Carla as "an exuberant force behind the evolution of Politics and Prose from a simple storefront into an institution that defined Washington's literary scene."

My condolences and my prayers to her many friends. Carla's passing is a great loss.

What If . . . Jimmy Carter won his second term?

Book 86: Jimmy Carter by Julian E. Zelizer

What if . . . ?

I've always been a fan of that open-ended question, especially as it relates to my decades-long infatuation with Marvel Comics. What if Spider-Man joined the Fantastic Four? What if the Fantastic Four had different powers? What if Doctor Doom had become a hero?

The possibilities are endless. Not simply as they relate to the Marvel Universe, but to the more mundane and superhero-free universe that we inhabit.

Consider, What if, in 1980, Jimmy Carter had won election to his second term as president? Ronald Reagan would never have been president. By the time, Reagan's next opportunity came around, in 1984, he Reagan would have been 72 and it seems reasonable to believe voters would have turned elsewhere.

If Reagan had not been President, George Bush would not have been Vice President and, again, it seems reasonable to believe that Bush would have never been elected President. If we did not have Bush I, we would not have had W.

And if we had not had W. . . . well, so it goes. America's political landscape would have been transformed.

But Carter did not win. As Julian Zelizer documents in his biography of Carter -- another fine entry in the American Presidents series -- the peanut farmer from Georgia ran afoul of a combination of his own shortcomings and a series of national and world events crippling to any political ambitions.

Some of Carter's shortcomings were born in his first campaign for President. He ran as the consummate Washington outsider alienating members of Congress, including members of his own party. Carter disliked legislative politics and the infighting and ass-kissing it entailed, again alienating members of his own party; members he would need to secure not only passage of his legislative programs, but to pull together the disparate segments of the Democratic Party in support of his campaign for re-election.

Carter had the misfortune to want to save the world -- notably in his efforts to bring peace to the Middle East -- at a time that his own country was drowning in unemployment, high energy prices and the shock of the Iranian hostage crisis. He was never able to successfully cope with those domestic and foreign challenges, driving Independents and many traditional supporters of the Democratic Party into the arms of a nascent Conservative movement.

Zelizer provides a balanced appraisal of Carter as President. He notes, rightly, I think, that Carter was more successful on the world stage in the years following his presidency than he was during his ill-fated four-year term.

The general view of Carter is that he was a good man ill-suited and overwhelmed by the duties of the presidency. Zelizer corrects that view. Carter was an intelligent man and his presidency was largely successful in its first two years. "The president pushed for some of the most comprehensive energy programs that had ever been attempted and won support for a few of those policies, such as solar energy, that are today considered essential," Zelizer writes.

The institutionalization of human rights within American foreign policy and brokering a durable peace agreement between Israel and Egypt rank among his most significant and lasting accomplishments.

Ultimately, Carter was overwhelmed by his own shortcomings, the press of national and world events and a movement that's time had clearly come. Zelizer's analysis of Carter's one term as president opens the door to another question:

What if Jimmy Carter had never been elected president?

Pooping in space and other topics you wanted to know about, but didn't want to ask

These two most recent books -- one a mystery, the other a work of non-fiction -- satisfy my number one criteria: they are entertaining reads.

Book 84: Packing for Mars by Mary Roach

Entertaining isn't something you necessarily expect, or look for, in a work of non-fiction, but that's an apt description of Mary Roach's treatise on man's efforts "to boldly go where no man has gone before."

Roach writes in a effortless manner that equates to a dinner-time chat across the kitchen table with a knowledgeable friend, a friend who is seeking to entertain as well as to inform. Her sense of humor infuses the entire book and, again, brings an unexpected, but welcome quality to a work of non-fiction.

Another apt description of Packing for Mars is gross. Roach dishes out gross, but also engrossing information on all those things we've wondered about life in space, but never asked. She discourses on vomiting, farting, body odor and peeing while among the stars, but her most notable chapter is on pooping in zero gravity.

One might conclude (and I will) that Roach takes the line "to boldly go where no man has gone before" literally in this charmingly informative book.

Book 85: The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny

Charm oozes from the work of Louise Penny. The Cruelest Month is her third novel to feature Inspector Gamache and the villagers of Three Pines.

Give Penny credit, she is willing to embrace all the conventions of the cozy novel. In The Cruelest Month she goes so far as to summon all the murder suspects at the scene of the crime, a haunted house overlooking the village, for the grand denouement by Gamache. It's an ancient convention that Penny manages to make freshingly new.

All her strengths are on display: a genuine mystery to unravel, a brisk and riveting narrative and vividly drawn characters. One particularly nice aspect of The Cruelest Month is the conclusion of a shadow upon Gamache's career.

I have not dwelt on this plot line in talking about Penny's first two books, and I won't here either, expect to say Penny weaves the various threads together into a most satisfying conclusion.

It will be interesting to see where she takes this series in future novels. We have so much more we want to know about Gamache, the members of his team and the village of Three Pines.

On Freedom and Super Sad True Love Story

Book 82: Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
Book 83: Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

There are many similarities to these two much-heralded books. Both are savage commentaries on the state of American society. Both authors employ love stories as the framing device in which to unroll their commentary.

And I didn’t like either book much.

Franzen’s Freedom has enjoyed all the accolades that the American media can generate: the author made the cover of Time magazine, Freedom was tabbed as the final Oprah Book Club selection (with all the concomitant prestige and increased sales) and The New York Times proclaims the book “a masterpiece of American fiction.”

Publicity for Shteyngart’s dystopian look at a dying America, set in the immediate future (“oh, let’s say next Tuesday,” proclaims the dust jacket), may be more muted, but is no less enthusiastic.

Yet in the face of this gale of critical acclamation, I have problems with these two novels? Damn, betcha.

Franzen's characters are neither fully formed nor appealing. Four characters share the stage -- Walter and Patty Berglund; their son, Joey; and Walter's college roommate, Richard Katz. (A fourth member of the Berglund family, a daughter, Jessica, is limited to a cameo role.)

For much of the novel they are mere cardboard cut-outs, vessels for Franzenian rants on a range of topics from the current generation’s penchant for wearing flip-flops everywhere to the ecological devastation of coal mining in West Virginia to the dangers of world over-population to the predations of house cats on the American songbird population.

We know from the Time magazine article that Franzen is a bird-watcher. Perhaps he should have limited his concerns to the world’s dwindling bird population. Because the trouble with the rant-a-page approach is that the reader does not where to place our limited supply of outrage. Should I be pissed about house cats on the prowl for songbirds? Environmental devastation in neighboring West Virginia? Or those damn flip-flops?

Franzen is clearly more interested in his extended rants on the state of America than in character development. Unfortunately, his characters are not only stock characters, but unappealing stock characters.

Joey is the prodigal son, who wants to make lots of money and be a member in good standing of the Republican Party. Ignored by her parents, Patty over-compensates with her own children. She's a stay-at-home-mom and that's clearly a poor career choice in Franzen's mind. Patty also desires Richard Katz more than her own husband. Katz is some sort of alt-rocker who can't handle success. And Walter . . . Walter is the rational, do-gooding liberal whose dirty little secret is that he has nothing but contempt for the people he's trying to help. He’s the intellectual who successfully overcame a impoverished background, including an underachieving alcoholic father, and now secretly wonders why others can't do the same.

Two themes run through the book. The first is that people aren't what they seem to be. They're neither as good nor as bad as we might believe them to be. Much of Patty's frustration with Walter, and their marriage, is that Walter believes she's better, nicer, than she knows she really is. Walter doesn't realize that Patty, like Jimmy Carter, has lust in her heart. Patty wants Walter to love her, not Walter’s idealized version of her.

The second theme has to do with freedom -- hence the title. Essentially, Franzen suggests, Americans have too much of it and don't know what to do with what we have. All that freedom has gone to waste.

A lot of reviews describe Freedom as darkly comedic. It is dark, but there's not a lot of humor here -- the satire is laid on too heavily and with too much certainty on the author's part that he knows what's best for us to be even slyly comedic. Comedy depends on the comedian laughing with us, not at us. Franzen, like Walter, doesn't seem to like people much.

Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story (hereafter referred to as SSTLS) presents a more sophisticated and prescient satire than Franzen. (Less rant, more thought.) SSTLS recalls some of the early work of William Gibson.

Shteyngart, for example, takes the Blackberry prayer -- our modern tendency to dip the head forward, peering intently toward our lap as we feverishly connect via our increasingly sophisticated mobile phones -- to a logical and scary place where people are always connected to a tiny and ever-present “apparat.” Late in the novel when Americans suddenly find themselves severed from a connection to their “apparat” there are those who find suicide the only acceptable response.

In SSTLS, America is socially, culturally and financially bankrupt. The great American empire has given way to a third world country divided between the haves and have-nots and soon to be divided among the Chinese and the Middle East and other wealthy nations.

Lenny, the protagonist of SSTLS, works for a company that sells life extensions. In this brave new world no one has to die. Actually, no one who is a high net worth individual (HNWI) has to grow old and die. Lenny can’t afford the treatments that will keep him forever young, but does find his own fountain of youth when he falls in love with a Korean woman half his age.

And it’s this love story where Shteyngart goes astray. If his satire is sharper and richer than Franzen’s, his characters are just as wooden. Granted, they’re more appealing – Lenny’s a Jewish schmuck who loves his parents and clings to a collection of real honest-to-God books – but we still don’t care much.

Personally, I think Lenny is better off without his love interest, the boyish Eunice Park, whose betrayal is filled with self-interest. Trust Shteyngart to write an unconventional love story, but conventional love stories work because the reader is rooting for the lovers to get together or to get back together once they've been separated. The idea is that love, not self-interest, prevails.

Franzen and Shteyngart have written interesting books, which is to damn them both with faint praise. It’s the best I can do.

2010 National Book Festival

The 10th annual National Book Festival was today on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Bibliophiles were in line for author Ken Follett 3 hours before his signing was scheduled to begin.

Author Ken Franzen also attracted a line of fans hours before his scheduled appearance.

Jonathan Franzen signing a copy of Freedom, his newest book.

And a smile for a fan from Franzen.

My wife, Beth, waiting for Jonathan Franzen to appear. We were first in line for Franzen as well as Jane Smiley. It was a great day, with thousands on hand, despite the heat.

RIP: David Thompson

David Thompson died unexpectedly this week. He was 38.

I had never met David, but I felt that I knew him. And I felt that he knew me.

David was the publicity manager of Murder by the Book in Houston. He was also married to store owner McKenna Jordan. Five years ago, David founded Busted Flush Press, a small publishing company issuing both original material and reprints of neglected mysteries and thrillers.

But he was something more than the publicity manager or the husband of the store's owner or a small-press publisher. Quite a bit more, in fact.

David loved books and the bookstore where he'd worked more than than two decades and he loved the customers who shopped at Murder by the Book. His wife, McKenna, said, "He really prided himself on customer service, on knowing his customers and knowing which books they would love."

And I know that's true because of the time and interest that David invested in me. I've been buying from Murder by the Book for the five or six years. In that time David began to know what I liked and he would make recommendations, recommendations that were almost always spot on. And when they weren't -- although it was certainly something he didn't needed to do -- David would apologize. He took it personally when a recommendation fell flat.

There weren't many times like that, however. David has an uncanny sense for the books and authors that appealed to me. No, I take that back. It wasn't uncanny. David simply cared enough to pay attention and to listen and to ask questions; all that in a relationship forged over email.

I have experienced a profound sense of sadness and loss since I learned of David's death. I'm going to miss him.

And there's not much more I can do expect tell McKenna and David's family and friends how deeply I regret his passing and pray for them to find courage and strength and some measure of comfort at a time when life seems so unfair.

On the inventiveness of Stross and Diaz

Book 80: The Fuller Memorandum by Charles Stross

Let's call it a guilty pleasure and be done with it. Charles Stross is among the more inventive writers working in the science fiction genre today. He's also among the most entertaining, deftly ranging from hard sci fi to space opera.

The books in two of his series -- the Laundry novels and the Merchant Princes -- make an unusual claim to inventiveness by re-inventing works created by others.

The Merchant Princes series recalls the work of Roger Zelazny. The Laundry novels tap directly into the writing of H.P. Lovecraft. There is magic in the world, but it's mathematically based and the rise of the personal computer -- among other things -- opens doorways into our world to things that go-bump-in-the-night and serves to hasten the end of the world.

It's the job of Stross hero (or anti-hero) Bob Howard to keep the gibbering, soul-eating horrors at bay. Howard does so again in The Fuller Memorandum, calling upon a horde of zombies to defeat a cult, the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh, that's attempting to bring about the end of the world.

I know how it sounds, but the novels are hugely entertaining and after Guillermo del Toro bring's Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness to the big screen, well, the Laundry novels are going to find a whole new audience.

Book 81: Drown by Junot Diaz

Talking about wildly inventive authors is the perfect time to segue to Junot Diaz, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

Diaz explores much the same territory in the short stories in Drown that he later expanded into a novel with Oscar Wao. Shall we call these stories gems? Works for me. They're wonderful. It's impressive that someone has young as Diaz has such command of his craft.

Read these stories out of sequence. Start with the first story, Ysrael, but then jump to No Face and then simply absorb the astonishing fact of Diaz's powers of observation, his empathy and his penetrating insight into the lives of these struggling Dominicans.

Diaz is among the most authentic and commanding writers of his generation. I eagerly await his next book.

Tinkers, It's A Book, Bad Boy and more

Book 74: Tinkers by Paul Harding

It's unfortunate for Paul Harding that his first book, Tinkers, won the Pulitzer Prize. Unfortunate because this is a deeply flawed book and the acclaim that Harding now enjoys is likely to obscure that fact.

Tinkers is one of those books where the writing -- or over-writing in this instance -- gets in the way of a terrific story. The writing is certain to have impressed the Pulitzer judges, but not a reader seeking a pure and uncluttered narrative.

It is difficult, at times, to understand what Harding is writing about or to reconcile the narrative voice with the characters he has fashioned and whose stories seems compelling if we could only get at it.

Book 75: Composed by Rosanne Cash

I've been a fan of Johnny Cash for as long as I can remember, but I never paid any attention to the recordings of his daughter Rosanne. Then a friend recommend The List, her superb album that's built around a list of songs her father said every singer-songwriter should know.

The List led me to Composed, the newly released memoir by Cash. The memoir is a pleasant surprise. It's as readable and compelling as her recordings.

One caution: Johnny Cash, musical icon, is here in these pages, but he is generally superseded by Johnny Cash, Rosanne's Daddy, and that's as it should be. Part of the reason this book succeeds is that it is Rosanne's story, not "Johnny Cash as I knew him."

Rosanne Cash will never enjoy the musical stature obtained by her father -- few will -- but her journey through life, and her efforts to define herself as an artist, make Composed something far better, more rich and rewarding, than the standard celebrity bio.

Book 76: Lyndon B. Johnson by Charles Peters

I've long been an admirer of the long-running American Presidents Series by Times Books. This entry, by Charles Peters, is among the best.

Peters has a writing style that is inviting and he offers a incisive portrait of LBJ as a flawed man who is likely to rank in the second tier of Presidents. Below Lincoln, Washington and FDR, but alongside Jefferson, Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt.

It's a fair assessment. Johnson could be petty and cruel. His insecurities helped mire this nation in an unnecessary war in Vietnam. Yet, as Peters notes, LBJ's legislative record is one only FDR can match. Peter's cites two examples and they will serve here as well: Medicare and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Johnson is the subject of fine, multi-book biographies by Robert Caro and Robert Dallek. If you're looking for something shorter, that nicely captures life and presidency of Johnson, this is the book.

Book 77: Bad Boy by Peter Robinson

A former neighbor, needing advice, comes looking for Chief Inspector Alan Banks. But Banks is on vacation, thus setting off a comedy of errors by the police that quickly turns deadly.

Banks' daughter Tracy and DI Annie Cabbot are caught up in the aftermath of a police operation gone wrong. Banks returns from his holiday to the states to find his daughter missing and Cabbot in the hospital fighting for her life.

The merits of a long-running series with well-established characters are apparent in this gripping and delightful thriller. I can't say that Robinson's outdone himself with Bad Boy. I can say that he's done it again.

Book 78: It's a Book by Lane Smith

I like children's books and I especially like the work of author/illustrator Lane Smith.

For readers and book lovers, Smith's newest book is an absolute delight. It features a mouse, a jackass and a gorilla. Gorilla is reading a book and jackass simply can't understand how it works.

Can it text? Tweet? Wi-fi? Nope. Nada. And no.

The final page . . . well, it contains a line I'll be using for a long, long time.

Book 79: Cardboard Gods by Josh Wilker

This is not, as I originally thought, a book about collecting baseball cards. It is a memoir with an interesting conceit. Wilker selects a single baseball card, writes about what he sees in that card or what it meant to him and what was going on in his life when he obtained the card.

Eddie Murray represents not merely promise, but promise realized. Ron Guidry, who pitched so well for the hated (by Wilker) New York Yankees, is the sum of the fears that runs through Wilker's adolescent life, and so on.

It works, mostly. Better than I had initially thought. Still, its an odd book. Not quite baseball, not fully memoir, but some odd blend of the two. Wilker drifts through life and his embrace of loserdom is so complete and unquestioning that his attitude becomes a drag on the book as it was on his life.

Yet the fact that we have this book and that Wilker marries in its final pages demonstrates that, like Eddie Murray, he has realized his early promise.

Robert Duvall, Angelina Jolie and Royal Books' Kevin Johnson on books into film

Robert Duvall.

That’s my answer to a question I’ve posed to myself: What single actor’s signature on books that have been made into films would I most covet?

Consider: Duvall played Boo Radley in To Kill A Mockingbird, Ned Pepper in True Grit, Major Frank Burns in MASH, Tom Hagen in The Godfather, Lt. Col. ‘Bull’ Meechum in The Great Santini, Max Mercy in The Natural, Gus McCrae in Lonesome Dove. He appeared in The Handmaid’s Tale, The Road and Crazy Heart.

Each of those films, in which Duvall appeared, and many more, I’m certain, were adapted from books.

I don’t collect books that have been made into films. But anyone who collects modern first editions -- as I do -- is certain to have some books from that category of collectibles on their shelves -- as I do. (Lonesome Dove, The Age of Innocence, Get Shorty, Gone Baby Gone, for example.)

But I wanted to know more about the topic, including whether my assessment of Duvall was reasonable. So I turned to Kevin Johnson. Kevin is the owner of Royal Books in Baltimore and a long-time cinephile. He’s capitalized on his knowledge of books and love of films by authoring two books: The Dark Page, Vol. 1, Books That Inspired American Film Noir 1940-1949 and The Dark Page, Vol. 2, Books That Inspired American Film Noir 1950-1965.

Kevin said that an actor’s signature on a book can add value, but there are a great many conditions to that statement.

“In my experience . . . a celebrity autograph is not as heavy hitting as an autograph by an author or an artist,” Kevin said.

An autograph by an actor isn’t a bad thing, but the signature of a director or screenwriter is better. That’s because the role of the director or screenwriter in the creative process is more analogous to the author’s role.

If you do secure the autograph of someone who has appeared in a film made from a book be certain it’s someone central to the film. “Get the main guy,” Kevin said.

Kevin also said that some actors have “literary credibility” than others. Compare Angelina Jolie, who has appeared principally in films made from graphic novels, to Duvall or Jeff Bridges or even Nick Nolte. “Sissy Spacek is a more literary actress than Michelle Pfeiffer,” he said.

According to Kevin, literary credibility arises by appearing in films that have artistic credibility or literary connections.

Artistic credibility can be difficult to achieve. Kevin notes that some great books result in mediocre films. He thinks it’s because “the pressure of turning a beloved novel, or a popular novel that everybody has read, into a great film is challenging. They feel compelled not to change things.”

The outcome is often different with an obscure book because there’s less pressure.

Kevin cites The World According to Garp as a successful movie made from the popular book by John Irving. Yet, he notes, that the director chopped out more than half the book. Kevin said he didn’t actually read Irving’s novel until years after he saw the film. “I liked the book more,” he is quick to point out, “but the film version was still very memorable and compelling.”

Another good literary adaptation: No Country For Old Men, which was based on Cormac McCarthy’s novel.

Yet a book’s success, or an author’s popularity, is no guarantee of big-screen success. Kevin said the film version of McCarthy’s All The Pretty Horses was mediocre. “Nobody remembers it,” he said. “It didn’t live up to the book.”

Other examples of mediocre film-based books, according to Kevin: Giant, which starred Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean and Rock Hudson in the film version of Edna Ferber’s novel. “They tried to make a big, sprawling movie,” Kevin said, “and it didn’t quite work—not bad, but not great.” The two sound film adaptations of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby – starring Alan Ladd in the 1940s and Robert Redford in the 1970s – both failed.

Lousy film adaptations clearly didn’t have an impact on the collectible value of Gatsby, but a great film can increase the value and collectability of a book. “It depends on how well-known the book is,” Kevin said. “Once the word is out . . . the first edition can become a very desirable thing.”

One example, he said, is the book Mute Witness by Robert L. Pike, which is the basis for the Steve McQueen film Bullitt. Kevin said collectible copies of Mute Witness can be difficult to find because most of the print run found its way to libraries. In addition to being the source of a popular movie, the book has a great jacket design. Kevin said whenever he’s able to obtain a copy, he can always sell it quickly.

Jeff Bridges’ recent Oscar vehicle, Crazy Heart, significantly boosted the value of Thomas Cobb’s novel of the same name. The novel, said Kevin, “is not scarce, but it’s not common.” But it was, he said, completely forgotten until the movie was released.

Ultimately, Kevin said the value of a book made into a film always derives from market forces, supply and demand. Do people want the book? Kevin admits that “at times, it’s sort of a mystery to me.”

One example is the book Matchstick Men by Eric Garcia, which was the source of the 2003 Nicholas Cage movie of the same name. “I loved that movie, and I’ve tried to sell the first edition,” Kevin said, “but the book has just quietly gone away.”

On the flip side, Chuck Palahniuk’s novel, Fight Club, which inspired a 1999 film starring Edward Norton and Brad Pitt, is highly sought after. Kevin believes the interest in Fight Club extends beyond interest in the film. It appeals to people, he said, who are connected to the novel and film in a philosophical way. “It’s always sold well,” he said. “Interest has never flagged.”

People like to collect books that led to Oscar winners such best picture, best director and best actor.

As with any reader and film fan, Kevin has his favorite books he’d like to see made into film. He is championing The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, a novel by Philip K. Dick. A number of Dick’s novels and stories have been made into film (Blade Runner, A Scanner Darkly, Total Recall) and, Kevin said, Palmer Eldritch, “a wild, LSD-influenced sci fi novel” could be a great film in the hands of the right director.

He’s eager to see what Guillermo Del Toro, director of the wildly inventive Pan’s Labyrinth, does with H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness, which now in development. If it’s well done, Kevin thinks, the film could introduce an entire new generation to Lovecraft’s work.

Finally, he’d like to see someone adapt the late Ross Macdonald’s Archer series to a visual medium. This was tried unsuccessfully, Kevin believes, with the Paul Newman films Harper and The Drowning Pool. Macdonald’s novels “are so literate and so visual and so much in tune with California,” Kevin said, that he believes they’d make great films. Or better yet, a cable series. Something, Kevin said, with the style and literate approach of AMC’s award-winning series Mad Men.

Anyone interested in building a collection of books made into films could gain a solid understanding of how to begin by visiting the Royal Books website. There’s the video mentioned earlier as well as the opportunity to buy The Dark Page (volumes one and two). Book catalogs, issued regularly by Royal Books, are invaluable research tool and as fun to leaf through as the Sears catalog once was at Christmas.

Kevin’s working on a third book. The book, which has the working title The Fractured Page, will examine film sources for crime films and dramas from the ‘60s and ‘70s. Kevin said that the period from 1970 to 1976 was particularly ripe for successful book adaptations. There was, for example, Serpico, The Godfather, Marathon Man, Point Blank and The Graduate – all successful films and all collectible books.

Kevin is also contemplating a fourth book on the film sources for screwball comedies.

On Fesperman, McMurtry and sportswriting in The New Yorker

Book 71: Layover in Dubai by Dan Fesperman

It's an entertaining book, but Dan Fesperman's Layover in Dubai is nonetheless a book that relies far too much on convention and cliche.

The recipe is a familiar one: take one innocent, drop him into a pot of boiling trouble and watch him not only escape the boiling pot, but succeed admirably by bringing a quintet of bad guys to justice.

You've read it before. We all have. In this case, the innocent is Sam Keller, an auditor for an international pharmaceutical company. Sam's asked to do a favor of the company's head of security; a favor that begins by extending a six-hour layover into a couple of days. Before you know it, Sam's on the lam, wanted by his company, the corrupt Emirati police and a couple of hulking Russian no-goodniks.

Sam's only ally is the one non-corrupt man on the Emirati police force who -- yes, it's true -- has a lovely daughter who defies Muslim convention, along with her mother and father.

What lifts Layover in Dubai above the run-of-the-mill thriller is Fesperman's detailed description of Dubai. It's not a place I want to visit, except from the safe confines of Fesperman's novel.

Book 72: The Only Game In Town, Sportswriting from The New Yorker, edited by David Remnick

I suppose that if you weren't a sports fan you might make a case against The Only Game In Town. Then again, the writing is so crisp, so vivid and just so damn wonderful that I don't think a case can be made against the anthology at all. Instead, I'd argue that it shows once again how great writing can (and does) make any topic fascinating.

In compiling such an anthology, Remnick has had a rich treasure trove to plunder. Here's John Cheever, Calvin Trillin, Dan DeLillo, Susan Orlean (with an all too short article), John McPhee, Malcolm Gladwell and . . . that's only a fraction of the writers.

Shaq is here. Tiger Woods, too, and Lance Armstrong.

The Only Game in Town shines because of both the writers and the written about.

My favorite piece, and one that I estimate I've read a dozen times, and would gladly read a dozen more, is The Web of the Game by Roger Angell. Angell sits in the stands with Smokey Joe Wood while watching a baseball game between Yale and St. John's. The game is notable because Wood is in the stands and Ron Darling and Frank Viola are on the mound for Yale and St. John's respectively.

My suggestion is buy this book now and set it in the shelf for the coming winter. When winter arrives, I prescribe a story a day.

Book 73: Hollywood by Larry McMurtry

Larry McMurtry's a clever man as evidenced by his multiple careers as rare book dealer, novelist and screenwriter.

He's written about each in a series of memoirs -- Books, Literary Life and now Hollywood. Yes, that's correct. Three memoirs when one would have done the trick.

All are rather light; each even given to the occasional one paragraph chapter. McMurtry notes, coyly I thought, in Hollywood that readers have complained about the brevity of the chapters in the previous two books.

My sense is that McMurtry believes he'll generate a little more coin for himself through the sale of three memoirs rather than one. Perhaps so. I certainly bought all three.

More power to him. There's the occasional entertaining anecdote, but no more than that. Really, Larry, you could have done better by yourself.