A big fat book can be a wonderful thing, whether in spite of its length or because of it.  I spent a couple weeks getting through The Children’s Book by A. S. Byatt.  At another time in my life I probably could have done it in a few days if I had nothing else to do, but it is hefty and not a one-sitting kind of thing.  The only other book of Byatt’s I read is Possession, and that was a long time ago, though I remember liking it.

TCB has a lot of things that I normally don’t like.  It’s historical (not a dealbreaker, but not necessarily a big plus), it’s full of long tangents getting into the happenings of the day, and it features cameos from famous figures of the time.  I understand that Oscar Wilde and Rupert Brooke feature into the social circles of the book, but I also can’t help feeling like an author has misappropriated them for their own purposes without their consent.  I was willing to forgive all these flaws because I got very quickly caught up in Byatt’s story.  I’ve read a lot of books set in turn-of-the-century Britain lately, and I’ve read a lot of authors from that time period, so that helped.  I was aware of the resurgence in children’s fiction (J. M. Barrie and the like) but hadn’t ever realized how broad it was, so that was also nice.

Byatt does what I like best in an author: she presents a story with several characters, where each are allowed their own point of view.  Because of the large number of characters in TCB, some do get shortchanged.  But those you get to know best do develop a strong inner life and get to interact with all sorts of other characters.

Unfortunately, as the book went on it became clear that Byatt was less concerned with the individual stories of her characters and more concerned with placing them into a larger historical context.  (Thus the repeated appearances of Brooke.)  The more the world started to invade their lives, the less interesting the book became.  It wasn’t at all surprising that it all came to a head at World War I, if anything it became so obvious that this would happen about halfway through the book that it was rather anticlimactic.  I still don’t quite know what to think about the ending.  It is all so quick and dirty.  And I can’t quite figure out how it fits into what Byatt is trying to say.  Did the War force the generation of children to grow up?  Or does it mean that they’d doomed their own children to become adults far too quickly?  And while an awful lot of characters died in those last few pages, many were ones we didn’t know well and the cumulative effect of all those deaths actually made it less affecting.

Still, for about half the book, I fervently adored it and if it all could have stayed like that I think it would become a new favorite.  I don’t know that I will read it again, but I do feel comfortable recommending it, especially to people who like historical novels.

I feel like all my reading got put on hold while I spent weeks trying to finish TCB.  I am still in the middle of Rabbit, Redux.  I have started The Lost City of Z, and should probably get back to it since I’m sure I can’t renew it.  I have just dived into This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper, and expect to be finished soon.  TIWILY is good.  It reminds me of The Corrections, except it’s funny and wry and raunchy and doesn’t take itself so seriously.  (These are all compliments.)  I am listening to Brave New World on audio, I realized it had been at least a decade since I’d read it and I could hardly remember anything about it, I think it is one of those books you need a decent memory of since it’s in a host of cultural references.  I also wanted to make sure that I like 1984 better.  You always have to pick one.  Thus far, my mind has not changed.  It is good, it is sometimes horrifyingly prescient.  But I think the use of the “savages” could have been a bit better.  Still, I think Huxley pulls you in pretty well, which is a big deal in this kind of fiction.

I am reaching the end of the year, which means I’ll have to put some thought into my best list.  I have a few specific ideas for my favorites, but I won’t be able to make the kind of extensive list I made last year.  It hasn’t been so bad, the highs have been quite high, but I have suffered through a few more books than I should have.  I need to learn to get out sooner.

As you’d expect for the parent of an infant, I am sadly behind on movies.  I would love to go see Fantastic Mr. Fox and Up in the Air and Precious and Nine (yes, please, Nine!) and Invictus and A Serious Man and Broken Embraces but most of these probably won’t come to pass since I have a baby who must be entertained and a husband who’s not particularly interested in any of these movies.  So it’s back to the DVD queue for me.  I have had When Father Was Away on Business and Farewell, My Concubine sitting at my house for at least two weeks so I haven’t been particularly good on that front either.

I did watch almost all of the 7Up films recently, though.  (35Up is not available on Netflix Watch Instantly, but all the others are.)  I found it very interesting, especially since your expectations were often totally overthrown from one film to the next.  I didn’t mind so much that it was an intrusion into the lives of its subjects (as today’s reality tv often is) because they were allowed to comment on whether the films were effective and what they thought themselves.  It’s unclear whether there will be a film to follow 49Up, and there certainly has been a lot less change from film to film recently.  But I think they should keep going, if only to keep viewers from assuming that life is boring after 50.

I have too many books.  This happens now and then, when library requests placed over the course of several months suddenly come together and all show up at once.  So the current quandary is what to read first.

I have already made significant headway through the Rabbit tetralogy–I am about halfway through Rabbit Redux, the second book.  This one took first priority simply because of its extreme length.  I am liking the Rabbit books much more than I thought I would, though it’s still within the realm of expectation.  I may respect Updike, but they’re not the kind of books I would buy and put on my bookshelf.  (Unlike Eastwick, which will likely find a place there should I happen upon an edition I like.)

Jumping to the front of the queue was Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby.  It was one I was looking forward to and it seemed very likely there were other people requesting it, which meant I wouldn’t be able to renew.  I finished it last night and find myself both pleased and disappointed.  It is vastly better than his last book, which I didn’t even get 50 pages into.  However, it is not up to his best.  It seems Mr. Hornby, who was for so long obsessed with the man-child approach to life, is now obsessed with the pangs of middle-age.  The latter has much less verve than the former.  The book was certainly an improvement, but there was just something missing.

I realized that I currently think of Nick Hornby much the way I think of John Irving.  Both wrote a book 15-20 years ago that is one of my very very favorites.  (High Fidelity and A Prayer for Owen Meany)  Both tend to stick to particular themes and characters.  Both seem to be losing it a bit as time passes.  And both have written a book that left me wondering if I would ever read them again.  (A Long Way Down and The Fourth Hand)  Both also have new books this year, and I’m still on the waiting list for Irving’s new one.  I doubt either of them will be able to go back to the heights they once had, but I still tend to root for them anyway.  Juliet, Naked is still a fun book to read, especially for people with an interest in music.  Unfortunately, that pretty much guarantees a comparison to High Fidelity, which has such a gripping obsession with music that the comparison is not a good one for Juliet.

The next book to step up is Jar City by Arnaldur Indridason, an Icelandic mystery.  It is due next week, though I’m not sure I’ll finish it by then.  Likely to be sitting for a bit are books by C. J. Box and James M. Cain (a rather strange pairing–a low-key Western mystery writer and a master of suspense) which I may not actually get to in all the commotion.  After my Icelandic book, it’s most likely I’ll dive into The Lost City of Z by David Grann, one of my few nonfiction efforts for the year.

My most recent library trip only complicated this list by adding the sequel to Hunger Games, Michael Chabon’s newest book of essays, and the new A. S. Byatt which was shortlisted for the Booker.  Currently on the way to the library are a quick and likely fluffy thriller I should be able to plow through and a new novel I don’t know much about with plenty of hold requests.  It is going to be a tough month.

I don’t think it’s that uncommon to be somewhat literary and have some built in prejudices against writers you’re not very familiar with.  Personally, I have never felt much love towards the big male late 20th century writers like Updike and Cheever and Mailer and such.  (I make an exception for Roth, whose great work makes up for his not-so-great work.)  I haven’t done much reading in this area due to my prejudice, and now I must apologize.

Because, John Updike, I just read The Witches of Eastwick, and it was incredible.  I have been unfair.  Not only is Witches incredible, it’s also a book about and involving women.  Few men even attempt that kind of book and even fewer succeed.  Beyond a few missteps (I have to assume a bit of vanity when he has a female character think something great about having sex with a much older man…) it really hit the spot.  And one thing I really loved about it was just how old school it was.  While written in the 80’s, it’s set in the 60’s, and the women are all quite young (early and late 30’s) but have several children and the way Updike writes about their bodies with such honesty was one of the book’s high points to me.  He manages to be captivated by them, but also allows them to look upon themselves critically.

It was also a refreshing change from the current trends in magical realism, which is getting to be really tired and overdone.  Updike just eases you into it slowly and makes it all fit really well with the characters and the plot.  Yes, they are witches, more than that, they are witches in a world where witchcraft is not unheard of.  Even better, Updike’s magical realism has an actual point.  (Oh, how many of today’s young writers need to learn this lesson.)  They are witches and they are ostracized; but they’re also divorced and working and not all that interested in wifely or motherly duties.  (Actually, their neglect for their children was one thing that seemed off to me.  Updike wants to praise and admire women’s ability to bear children, but then seems to want them to cast off the same children once they show up. )

Reading the book was a pleasure (or listening, in my case; it was a new-ish recording with a great reader).  It was well plotted and always interesting, even if it ended a bit abruptly.  I am almost a little curious to see the movie.  I expect it to be completely wrong.  But I admit, I knew when I read the book that Jack Nicholson was in it and while I like him I think he’s often miscast.  I doubt that’s the case here.  This is actually one time when he’s really perfect for the part, I could visualize him the whole way through.  On the other hand, the women seem awfully miscast–Cher as the matronly Lexa?  Susan Sarandon may have the snap to play Jane, but Sukie’s the redhead…  And Michelle Pfeiffer in there makes me think they see Sukie as nothing more than the “hot” one.  I certainly doubt any of them will have anything resembling the bodies Updike describes so well in his book.  It is a very sensual book, for sure, so much took of bodies and skin and features.

As for where to go from here, I am not sure if I should read Updike’s recent sequel, The Widows of Eastwick, which I heard wasn’t great, or his classic Rabbit books, which I see as not being really my thing.  I’m undecided.  I’ll probably wait a while anyway, since I have plenty of books on reserve these days as it is.  I am nearly at 100 books for the year, and I don’t think it’s possible to hit 141 like I did last year, but I think 120 is a reasonable goal.

Finding a new tv show I love is kind of like a teenager getting a new boyfriend.  I get a little obsessed and convince myself that there is no show that is as good as this one.  Then it ends, I get depressed, and eventually move on to find another show that starts the cycle over.

Watching shows from week to week is all well and good, but there’s something nice about watching an old show on DVD with all the episodes in a row.  I got into this habit really heavily when I had morning sickness and couldn’t really move.  It’s stuck around since then and I tend to watch just one thing.

Last month I watched The Wire, a show I’d tried to watch once before but was a bit too close at the time.  I guess the public defender thing was all a little too fresh.  But now there’s some distance and I could enjoy it without feeling anxious or depressed.  It’s often called one of the best shows ever, and I did really like it.  I found it somewhat overhyped.  I admit, at times they were so spot on in conveying a sense of place and character.  But I also feel like their strength was often more in the long season arcs than in individual episodes.  I also think they had a couple of pretty weak seasons.  I wasn’t really into the discussion at the time, but I’m imagining everyone agrees season 2 was no good.  They got off track and never got back on.  Season 4 I’d read was the best but I have to disagree.  I saw it as one of the weaker seasons.  While the plots following the young kids were really well done and strong, the constant idea that things were going to change and get better rang really false to me.  Of course, that was borne out in season 5, but I honestly didn’t believe these characters would think anything would really change.  It all felt too sweet.  I was very very happy to see everything go to hell in Season 5.  I thought the show was at its best when it let the cops not be such good guys all the time, and Seasons 1, 3, and 5 were the ones that really explored that.

Now I am watching The Shield, which makes me laugh because it reminds me a lot of The Wire, which everyone said was so one of a kind.  It’s not, really.  The Shield beat The Wire to the air by a few months.  These shows really did pave the way for a show like Southland, though, which I am really really hoping gets picked up by another network.  (As if NBC wasn’t making bad enough decisions already.  Goodness.)  It took me a little while to warm up to The Shield.  It’s trying so very hard to be shocking in the first few episodes.  (Halfway through the first season, there were already two instances of people selling young girls as sex slaves.)  But it found a rhythm and it’s very firm in its characters.  And it’s really impressive how they get you to both love and hate Vic, the main character.  (In that way, I think it’s better than The Wire, where I always thought McNulty was a jerk and never liked him.)

I am doing some things non-TV related.  I finally saw Synecdoche, New York and had the reactions I expected: like it, admire it, kind of in awe of it, totally confused by it, sort of get it, have a lot of things to think about.  I do like how Charlie Kaufman movies always get you thinking, ideas roll around in your head for days afterwards.  I don’t know that I’m one of those people who will watch the whole thing over again but that’s probably because I’m not much for re-watching lately.

In books things have been a little slow.  I read The House on Fortune Street by Margot Livesey.  I’d read one of her earlier books and wasn’t crazy about it.  I liked this one but didn’t love it.  It felt very patched together.  It had four different sections following a different character though they were all intertwined.  But when you’re reading the first section you feel like it’s about one thing, then in another section it becomes something totally different.  It’s not such a bad thing if everything fits together, but I didn’t think it really did.  I guess at its heart it was about a friendship between two female characters, but I never could get a firm grip on that relationship.

I just finished South of Broad by Pat Conroy.  I love Pat Conroy.  His books may be just slight variations on the same theme, but there’s always something so lovely about slipping into them.  It’s like taking a warm bath with bubbles.  But unfortunately this one was not so warm a bath and the bubbles had all popped.  It was the first time I actively disliked a Pat Conroy book.  I’m not a big fan of The Prince of Tides but I didn’t really hate it.  This time after the first 50 pages I just couldn’t stand it and it never got better.  All the things that Conroy does all the time just didn’t work this time.  The tight knit group of friends that are supposed to be the core of the book just felt like a bunch of phonies.  I didn’t get a real sense of their friendship, there were at least 2 or 3 too many of them, and the way they were so conveniently paired off rang very false.  Conroy’s characters are often prone to great action for the love of a friend and that was again the case here, but since I wasn’t really buying the friendships to begin with, the action felt manufactured.  And since it was undertaken by the group en masse it didn’t feel as intimate.  One of his other flaws is the way his characters talk.  Often this is a weakness that becomes a strength, it’s one of the things that makes his books so enjoyable.  No, people don’t really talk like that, but wouldn’t it be grand if we did?  Here the constant repartee felt very constant and never seemed to reveal anything about the characters.  It felt like several copies of the same person talking to each other instead of the very diverse group they were supposed to be.

For example, one character, Molly, is a rich girl who ends up married to a rich boy.  It’s unclear what is so great about Molly or what her unique character traits are, besides her being lovely and desirable.  It’s unclear why she loves the man she does, especially when he’s such a jerk and never seems to redeem himself.  Conroy explains this many times by saying this was the life she was born to lead, but I didn’t buy it.  It seemed such a passive acceptance of fate, especially for a girl who was friends with all the crazies she was friends with.

It is so sad to be disappointed by Pat Conroy.  For a little while I wondered if he’s always like this and I just never noticed before, but I really don’t think so.  I adore Beach Music, and it’s only in the last two years that I read The Water is Wide and My Losing Season, both of which are nonfiction and just wonderful.  I was surprised that I cared so much about the latter, which is a book about a basketball team.  Conroy is such a friendly narrator that you feel like you’re having a chat over a good meal.  It’s a shame to see that go to waste here.  Perhaps he has run out of demons?  The ones in this book seem rather repetitive and pat if you look at the stuff he’s been into before.

Finally, I did get the BBC adaptation of The Forsyte Saga.  Sadly, it was so dreadful that I didn’t even finish the first disc.  Some people don’t seem to understand that some books should not be adapted, or should be adapted with a very very light touch.  This is one.  (Revolutionary Road is another cautionary tale.)  The first part told twenty years of backstory that the book was so good about revealing bit by bit.  And it wasn’t at all subtle about it either.  The book can have its omniscient narrator ruminate on property, but the movie had the characters dropping rather clunky and obvious lines about it to get the themes across.  And the casting was pretty dreadful.  Irene was not blonde, which is forgivable, I suppose, though I always pictured her standing out with her light coloring.  But while she was a striking looking woman, it was definitely not the right look for Irene.  Normally this wouldn’t matter, but the thing is that the character’s look is actually quite important to the story.  And it’s strange to hear all the characters describing her when she doesn’t at all fit their descriptions.  I couldn’t take it anymore.  I wonder if the 1967 version is any better.  I’ve thrown it in the bottom of my queue to take a break.  (Probably a very long break.  My queue has over 100 items in it.)

And just to keep track, I did get a mention on Filmspotting for the 3rd time.  I thought it might happen, since I did mention that I listened to the podcast while I was in labor.  Totally true and was actually quite nice.  After I’d had my epidural it was quite pleasant to find that they completely agreed with me on Public Enemies.  You can listen to the episode here.  I’m not around until nearly the end, around 39 minutes in.

Yesterday I finally got finished with what has been a good month or more of reading.  The book, The Forsyte Saga, is actually three novels with two interludes by John Galsworthy, a Nobel-winning author who was quite popular in the early 20th century.  I’d never heard of Galsworthy or his books and only stumbled upon them because I’d been watching Band of Brothers, which stars Damien Lewis, who was on my favorite cancelled show, Life.  I was wondering what else he’d done and found a BBC adaptation of The Forsyte Saga and figured I’d read the book first.  The big fat book and I have been spending lots of time together every night before bed.  I gave myself credit for 3 books on my book list, because one just wouldn’t be fair.  (Actually, this little trilogy is the first in a trilogy of trilogies.  Seriously.  The guy wrote one set of three novels, then another set of three novels, and then a final set of three novels, all of which go together in a giant set of three sagas.  I think I’m good with just the one, and the library doesn’t have the next one anyway.)

I’m a big fan of turn-of-the-century Brit Lit, so it’s not surprising I enjoyed the novel.  It follows the rather massive Forsyte family (don’t look at the family tree at the beginning!!  It has spoilers!!!) who weren’t much to speak of 75 years before, but have worked their way up into society.  They’re as high as you can get without having an aristocratic background and they manage to represent that particular class quite well.  Galsworthy is obsessed with their “sense of property,” which you could describe these days as their feeling of entitlement.  The entire saga centers on one event that takes place near the end of the first novel involving rape within a marriage.  At first I felt surprised that such a large thing was so nonchalantly described, but then I figured it was just the way things were back then.  Turns out Galsworthy is just a sneaky writer and this one act which is initially described so casually has massive repercussions and you see that he really does see it as an immoral act.

You definitely have to read all three books.  The main relationship, a marriage between Soames and Irene Forsyte, left me with a really unclear picture of Irene.  A lot of this is on purpose, Irene is presented through the eyes of others consistently through all three novels.  Your picture of Soames changes a lot, too.  I chuckled at Galsworthy’s introduction where he said he suspected his readers would think he didn’t like Soames but he actually did.  I admit, I found myself thinking that very thing.  He’s a sneaky writer.  It’s definitely saying something that I got all the way through those hundreds and hundreds of pages and kept going to one novel then the next.  It’s a shame Galsworthy seems to have been largely forgotten.

I’ve also been trying to read Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon.  (It has priority because as a new book, it probably won’t be renewable and I don’t want to pay fines.)  I’ve read two of Chaon’s previous books, mostly because I’d read good things about him and I wasn’t crazy about either of them.  Maybe his writing is just too meditative and ethereal for me.  I felt the same way about the first half of AYR.  Fortunately, the second half picked up and I was actually surprised when the three separate stories all tied together in a very unexpected way.  The writing got tighter at the same time, so that helped, too.  Still, I think Chaon is one of those fancy writers who’s just a little too flowery for my personal straightforward tastes.

There’s a backlog of books to catch up on, Forsyte definitely kept me from reading other things.  Hopefully I’ll keep my numbers up for the year.

Yes, we took the baby to a Quentin Tarantino movie.  No, it is not child abuse.  I checked.

Eric and I had discussed getting to a movie theater for a matinee now and then since the baby’s pretty portable and usually quiet.  He really wanted to see District 9 a couple weeks ago and I was happy to oblige.  It went very smoothly so Eric suggested we go see Inglourious Basterds, which I was really dying to see.  We have a good system worked out so far where we trade off baby duty and thus far it’s worked well.  I may go alone in the near future on weekdays, since early matinees during the week are nearly deserted, but we’ll see.

I’ve been brushing up on my Tarantino since I didn’t know how long it would be until I could see IB.  I hadn’t watched any of his early stuff in years so it was nice to go back.   I liked Reservoir Dogs about the same as the first time, liked Pulp Fiction less, and realized that Jackie Brown has some of the hallmarks of a Tarantino movie, but is basically the most by-the-book movie he’s made.  Granted, he did a great job of it, but I was surprised at how little it felt less like a Tarantino movie and more like a very smooth heist film.  (One thing that definitely stayed the same in my response to Jackie Brown: the cast is really top notch.  I’d hoped that it would revive the career of Robert Forster, who is just heartbreaking as Max Cherry.  A quick glance at IMDB shows that it actually did, just not on a massive scale.  He seems to have had very regular television work since then, when it was more of a trickle before.)

I still like both volumes of Kill Bill quite a lot, but I really really miss Tarantino’s dialogue.  I may be one of the only people out there sticking up for his long, meandering dialogue and monologue scenes, but I really love them.  Maybe I’m the only person who likes the first half of Death Proof as much as the second half.

Anyway, with all that said, I was really pleased with IB.  I don’t know why my expectations were somewhat low, perhaps it was because I had forgotten how much fun it is to see a Tarantino movie for the first time.  I can understand why the film is polarizing, it’s definitely one where reactions differ.  Personally, I was really impressed at how much better a filmmaker he is, especially after just watching his earlier work.  Kill Bill may be beautifully shot, but it’s lacking in the plot department.  IB was beautifully shot and had plenty of plot.  In fact, its double plot was an interesting device.  Eric’s reaction was that he thought most people would be expecting a WWII movie and get a Tarantino movie instead.  I felt exactly the opposite, I was amazed at the sleek and stylish WWII movie that kept cropping up in the middle of the Tarantino movie.

Thinking about it, it’s actually quite Shakespearean.  Shakespeare comedies (and sometimes tragedies) often have a double plot where one serves mostly as comic relief and both converge at the end.  Here, the Basterds are the secondary plot, the stuff for the peasants, the source of the laughs.  Shosanna’s plot is the high-minded one that’s the heart of the film.  I think it works well, though, especially since the Basterd storyline highlights the revenge element that is central to the movie (as well as so much Shakespeare).    Landa is certainly a high-quality villain worthy of Shakespeare, don’t you think?  He certainly has Iago’s wit and silver tongue.

It’s always hard to tell just how high-minded Tarantino wants to be, though.  Looking back at Pulp Fiction I see not a high-minded film but an exercise in storytelling that was far ahead of its time.  Kill Bill is one long homage to kung fu movies, Jackie Brown and Reservoir Dogs are well-executed genre exercises.  The word has been that IB was years in the making, and WWII films usually have an agenda so maybe he is trying to say something more here.

In particular I’ve been thinking about the theme of propaganda.  During the screening of Nation’s Pride, I initially thought it was kind of hilarious that the entire movie was just Zoller shooting people, not that I expected anything different since he was just a sniper in a tower.  But as the scene played on I thought Tarantino might actually be saying something rather heavy and I wonder if I’m reading too much into it.  Nation’s Pride was obviously propaganda, and the film is a lot about propaganda, and it was rather sickening to watch the audience take such glee in the killing of American soldiers.  But then a few minutes later, Tarantino has us watch as a few hundred Nazis are shot and/or burnt to death and seems to expect us to have our own gleeful reaction.

I dislike films that seem to kill for killing’s sake.  I don’t mind much of the killing in Tarantino movies because it’s always about style over substance, at least it always was before.  In IB it seems to be killing with a specific agenda and it makes me question how easily we cast Nazis as villains.  Certainly their ideology and the party itself can be called “evil” but the mantra of the Basterds, which designates all Germans as evil seems just as reprehensible as the Germans’ designation of all Jews as evil.  I’m wondering how much of this he wants to stick with us and whether it’s just an accidental happenstance in a film that’s all about death and revenge.  After all, it is a big fat homage to American war movies, most of which were just as full of propaganda as the German ones.

It certainly does give you something to chew on, and that’s been somewhat lacking in Tarantino’s more recent films.  Don’t get me wrong, I love watching his style and I do enjoy Uma Thurman in that yellow tracksuit, but I think he’s able to mesh that with a real point of view in IB.  Then again, I don’t want to put words in his mouth.  I’d be curious to chat with him about it if ever given the opportunity.  And I’d like to see it again on DVD.

Babies do make it hard to post, but it’s not as hard to read as I expected.  In fact, I think I’m about on course.  In the month or so (5 weeks, actually) since the baby was born I’ve read 15 books which has me similarly situated in terms of pacing.  Though I’m down just a little bit in the last two weeks when there haven’t been any grandparents around helping out, but I think I’m in a comfortable place.

Happily I’ve had lots of great stuff to read.  I absolutely loved Public Enemies by Bryan Burrough, and if you were around at all for the weeks I spent reading it you probably were already regaled with tales of outlaws.  It was a mediocre movie, and it’s even worse when you look at how amazing the book is.  Originally it was supposed to be adapted into a miniseries and I am crying real tears that it didn’t happen that way.  It would’ve been the best miniseries ever.

Public Enemies is a two-sided story, though it’s nonfiction.  It’s about a couple of crazy years of criminality, when John Dilinger, Bonnie & Clyde, the Barker Gang, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson and a bunch of others were all running around the midwest simultaneously.  It’s also about how their escapades led to the formation of what became the FBI.  But really, it’s just amazing how incompetent everyone was.  They were fantastically dumb criminals whose plans went constantly wrong, and the cops were even worse, especially the feds.  Following the constant games of cat and mouse was invigorating.  Initially it was a bit hard to follow since so much was happening at once, but as you settle in and get to know the big players better it becomes amazing to think that while one gang is stranded on the side of the road in Oklahoma, another is pulling off a bank robbery 100 miles away.  For someone who’s not a big nonfiction reader, I have to say it was one of the most engrossing nonfiction reads I’ve ever come across.

It also gave me a whole new perspective on the interaction between law enforcement and criminals.  People always go on and on about the 50’s and 60’s and how the Supreme Court suddenly gave criminals all these rights blah blah blah it ruined everything.  You know what?  It was sorely needed.  Because in all those hundreds of pages you don’t really see any warrants.  And they shoot you up before they’re sure who you are.  They didn’t even try to arrest most of them, they shot first and asked questions later.  And people are complaining about Miranda rights?  Goodness.

The other highlights of my recent reads were two great crime novels.  Black Water Rising by Attica Locke reminds me of early John Grisham, and I mean that in the best way.  It’s one of those stories of a lawyer who gradually gets entrenched further and further into a web of crime and scandal while trying to get out of it.  It’s set in the South (specifically in Houston).  It’s got a heavy political background, with a workers strike as one of the primary plot elements.  And there’s a heavy racial element as well.  It was a joy to read, the plot twists were constant and exciting and didn’t feel too contrived.  It was wonderfully written with exquisite character development.  I really look forward to seeing more from her.

Bad Things Happen by Harry Dolan is one I just finished and that was a doozy.  Very reminiscent of old noir, but in the best way.  Even better, it involved a magazine that published noir fiction, so the characters are always talking about what would happen if it was a noir story instead of real life.  An incredibly tight plot, great characters who come across as very believable, and a writing style that keeps you constantly intrigued.  I had a wonderful time reading it.  At one point I didn’t even care who the killer was anymore, I was just enjoying the ride.

In other book news, I’m done with Harlan Coben.  Apparently his books make better movies than books.  Stephen L. Carter missed with his newest book.  I feel like he may have peaked with New England White, he should go back to his strengths instead of trying these new approaches.  Scott Turow’s WWII novel was surprisingly good, I really enjoyed it.  I think Turow is better than he gets credit for, his novels are really full and interesting.  I don’t even think of him as a thriller writer anymore.  And I finally finished John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead, which is probably my least favorite of the three I read.  It had its moments, but overall it felt too scattered since it was constantly switching points of view and time periods and writing styles.  Not that he’s not an incredible writer, but it’s the kind of book you admire more than enjoy.  Which is a shame because I really enjoyed the first third.  And Tom Rob Smith’s sequel to Child 44 is like Child 44 except shorter and crazier.  That man has the writer’s version of ADD.  If an insane plot twist doesn’t arrive every five pages he’ll die.

I have a bunch of library books coming in and I’m dying to read Pat Conroy’s new novel and Margaret Atwood’s (coming out next month).  I plan to read them no matter what so I’m strictly avoiding reviews.  I’d also love to read Dave Eggers’ new book, especially since I was so enamored with What is the What, which everyone should read immediately.  I don’t know that I’ll be able to get any of them from the library… may be time to borrow the Kindle.

I made one of these lists last year and it was immensely helpful at the end of the year to remember the stuff I may have forgotten about at the beginning of the year.  This year I expect it to be even more helpful, since my soon-to-be-sleep-deprived brain will probably make the first 6 months of 2009 rather hazy.  While it’s been a pretty good 6 months, this was a surprisingly easy list to make.

Assassination Vacation/The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell.  I’ve always planned to get around to reading Sarah Vowell and I’m definitely glad I have.  In fact, I should probably reserve another now that I think about it.  While I really enjoyed the random trivia of AV, I think TWS actually takes it in head-to-head combat.  The more specific scope of the Puritans helps, as does Vowell’s ability to show how our misapprehensions about our country’s ideals continue to affect us.  (Also, I listened to TWS on audiobook, and Campbell Scott was one of the guest readers.  I like him.)

The Comedians by Graham Greene.  I really started the year well, with my first two books both making it on to my best-of list.  It should be no surprise that a Greene book makes my list, but I do have to say that it was quite an experience and possibly one of my favorite Greene books, even though it’s not considered one of his great works.  His dominant themes are definitely there and as ever the way he establishes a sense of place and character are impressive.  And, of course, a disaffected Brit gets to watch some foolhardy idealistic Americans make fools of themselves.

Sombrero Fallout by Richard Brautigan.  Probably one of the most bizarre books I’ve ever read, and yet it worked very well.  In its multiple narratives, a sombrero falls from the sky and somehow manages to lead to a near-apocalypse.  I wrote originally that it’s very Vonnegut-esque, and it is, but there’s a lyricism to it that Vonnegut lacks.  Why isn’t this guy more popular?

Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell.  This little piece of fluff is a bit out of place on this list, but it was one of the funniest and craziest books I’ve read in ages.  The book manages to be both amusing and appalling.  A medical resident whose former mix-ups with the mafia come back to haunt him sounds like movie material, but it’s so much more biting than that.

Transmission by Hari Kunzru.  I was introduced to Kunzru by the TOB, and particularly liked this earlier book.  It’s refreshing to get a different view of the Indian-American experience.  So many of our Indian-American authors have ivy league degrees and lovely New York brownstones, but Kunzru (who is actually a Brit) shows the more common side of what happens these days to an aspiring immigrant with computer skills.  While it may not sound interesting, it’s the book that convinced me Kunzru is a good writer, he just pulls you along for the crazy ride.

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters.  I admit I am still giving this book some time to grow on me.  It was served well by comparisons to other gothic-ish novels I read around the same time, none of which came close to this one.  While the story is familiar–an outsider watches the crumbling of a once-great family due to what may be supernatural influences–you can’t say Waters doesn’t tell it with style and skill.  I think my hesitation was due mostly to expectation.  After all, The Night Watch, Waters’ previous book, is probably one of my favorites of the last decade and I was expecting something similar.  But with these two most recent books she’s shown an amazing ability to move between genres and beyond the twisty plots she used so deftly in her first three novels.

Sag Harbor/ The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead.  Whitehead is definitely the big winner of the year thus far.  I have already grown nostalgic for Sag Harbor, wishing I could read another book just like it instead of what I’m actually reading.  The fact that the book, a coming-of-age style novel set one summer among black vacationers, is obviously a work of nostalgia itself shows how thoroughly it permeated my brain despite the fact that I’ve never actually “summered” anywhere.  I also have to give props to The Intuitionist, which is thoughtful and incredibly stylish while creating an entire world in and of itself.  Both books show off Whitehead’s incredible flair with words.

The Dragon Man by Garry Disher.  I’ve just finished another Disher novel and still like him immensely.  Technically these are your typical crime novel, police procedural, thriller, call it what you will.  But Disher manages to combine multiple crimes and characters in his plots giving the small town in Australia a feeling of claustrophobia.  He also really makes characters and it was nice to see them again, still flawed and struggling, one book later.  Disher takes things most of these novels have that don’t work and makes them work by giving them a feeling of reality.  Even though his main character has one of those pasts that all detectives these days seem to have in books, it doesn’t get bogged down.

The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher.  So I can’t say I’m the most appreciative or ideal reader of this book.  I wasn’t raised in Britain in the 70’s and 80’s, I’m not well acquainted with Thatcher-ism, I don’t have a good knowledge of the London vs. everywhere else classism of England, and I tend to dislike intergenerational family epics.  And yet I loved this book.  (Though I was annoyed at the book jacket for what I believe is misleading plot info.)  I practically devoured it despite the fact that it’s over 600 pages.  I wasn’t completely satisfied when it was over, though I credit this to the expectation created by the jacket that something big was coming and my own previously mentioned ignorance of the bigger picture in England.  Mostly that lack of satisfaction came because the book was over and I didn’t want it to be.  Many people have called this book very boring, which is one reason I put it off for a while, but I could barely put it down.

The New City by Stephen Amidon.  I will forgive Amidon for basically writing the same book twice.  I read Human Capital first, liked it okay, and then sought out The New City only to find that it was virtually the same thing.  TNC is set in the 70’s in a new subdivision and HC is set in the 2000’s in a swank suburb, but besides that many things are the same.  Except that TNC is much better.  It is always fun for me to realize part way through a book that we are approaching a tragedy of sheer Shakespearean proportions and that’s exactly what TNC was able to do that HC wasn’t.  (All of HC seemed too cleanly packaged to me, lacking the real muckiness of life.)  While all the characters moved forward towards their inevitable destruction, you were with them every step of the way.  I also found that the microcosm of local government is an ideal place for this kind of tragedy.  Based on my experience, it tends to be a place of big but fragile egos and a lot of striving and justifying.  TNC also managed to address the issues of race and class and idealism in a post-civil-rights country without feeling preachy about it, just letting the different characters mingle and stew.

You never know when you’ll hit a string of good or bad books when you take the approach I do.  I’m pretty broad these days in what I’m reading, requesting from the library anything that looks interesting.  I’m not sticking to familiar authors or series or anything, just bouncing all over.  (I will probably have a post later this summer on how depressing it is when an author you love writes a new book.  It should be exciting, but then you realize how long it will be until they write another one.  Pat Conroy and Margaret Atwood have new ones in the fall.  And it really makes me wonder when (if?) we’ll get another from one of my personal favorites, Donna Tartt, who takes a good 10 years per book.)

I’ve continued with Colson Whitehead, who I wrote about in my last post.  I’m in the middle of John Henry Days, which is somewhat slow going, but still really good.  (I think I’m just too distracted by my other books.)  At one point in a chapter, I was on pins and needles wondering what would be served for dinner.  That is a master at work.  Still, I think I’m admiring this book more than getting lost in it, the shifting viewpoints are getting kind of erratic.  I do miss the intimacy of Sag Harbor, which is probably one of my favorites of my reading so far this year.  (That list should come soon, too.)

As for my general reading, I am continuing my hot streak that started with Whitehead.  I read The Bridge of Sighs by Olen Steinhauer, who writes literary mysteries set in Eastern Europe, this one during communism.  While my general lack of knowledge about the time was a bit inhibiting, I did enjoy it and I think I’ll be reading more of his books.  And Tom Rob Smith (who has kind of ripped off his concept somewhat) could learn many lessons on subtlety from Steinhauer.  (Of course, I just reserved Smith’s new book, but I have a feeling it may pale in comparison.)

Then there was The Dragon Man by Garry Disher, another literary mystery, this one by an Australian writer.  I hadn’t heard of him before but he’s now high on my list of mystery writers.  The book was a traditional mystery with a crime happening early on and policemen trying to track down the killer.  But for once I actually felt like these were real detectives in a real city.  For one, they actually have other duties and work on other cases and deal with problems throughout the city.  (I hate how most mysteries treat it like all these detectives do is sit around for weeks working on one case.  They wish.)  There were a lot of characters, they were easy to keep track of, and I was actually having more fun reading about them than worrying about who the killer was.  (The book’s one flaw.  I knew it right off.)  I will definitely be recommending him in the future.  And I’ve already reserved another one of his books.

Then there was Human Capital by Stephen Amidon, someone else I’ve never heard of.  I think I got this one after reading about his newest release, which wasn’t available at the library so this was my second choice.  Bringing it home I was intrigued that it was blurbed by Tom Perrotta and Stewart O’Nan, two writers I like and that I don’t see blurbing every single thing that comes out.  It also meant that this was probably a book about sin in the suburbs, which is often overdone, but which can be really well done when in the right hands.  (See the aforementioned Mr. Perrotta.)   I really enjoyed reading the book, in many ways it’s one of my favorite kinds of reads.  I like books with a few set perspectives so you get to see someone from their own point of view and then see how their neighbor or spouse or friend sees them.  My major complaint about the book is that the big conflict, though it came halfway through the book, was too tidy in that it just happened to involve all these characters with competing interests and absolutely no one else, the resolution felt similarly neat.  Everything aligned just so and I would’ve liked a little bit more messiness.   But I plowed through it quickly and really enjoyed reading it, which tells me that at least he’s got the chops as a writer to pull me in and keep me going.  While it was set in 2001 and the little financial crisis that came then, it did feel quite resonant now that we’ve got the same thing, only bigger.  Especially since one of our lead characters has put himself into the kind of nightmare debt scenario that we hear so much about these days.  I’ve already reserved another one of Amidon’s books, too.

Finally, last night I finished Flight by Sherman Alexie.  I’ve been bad about putting off Alexie for a long time.  I always hear how great he is and I just never get around to putting him on my list.  I enjoyed Flight, which is one of those crazily messed up YA books we’re lucky enough to get nowadays, full of violence and insane moral dilemmas and big themes and surrealism.  While I did like it a lot, I think it’s one of those situations where I think I may enjoy more of Alexie’s “adult” writing.  That may keep me from reading one of his best-known books, the YA National Book Award winner, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.  And I’m torn between going with an adult novel or one of his many short story collections.  He seems to be more of a story writer, but sometimes I get impatient with story collections…

All this reading has gone by pretty fast, which leaves me with a few books on reserve that I need to go pick up, and at long last, a copy of The Northern Clemency.  I reserved that book like four months ago.  Now I’m a little scared that with all this furious reading, it’ll get lost in the shuffle.  That can certainly happen with a big, slow book like I’m pretty sure it is.  But I’ll give it a shot.

I’ve never gotten around to writing my post about my crazy gothic novel streak from a month or two ago.  Let me blurb them quickly:

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield: A nice quick read, a more literary bestseller but certainly nothing intimidating.

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters: I admit I was sad to see one of my very favorite authors do something different.  It lacked the snappy twisty plots she’s so good at.  Still, for atmosphere and writing and everything else, this one is far and away the best gothic novel I read of the bunch.  The time period is unusual for the genre (post-war Britain) but fits fantastically well.

The Observations by Jane Harris: Another somewhat non-traditional gothic novel.  The protagonist and narrator is definitely the major draw here.  Her voice is great, even if it’s more fun being with her than it is gradually getting all the revelations one by one.  Probably my #2 on this little list.

The House at Riverton by Kate Morton: I finished it just to make sure there wasn’t something really great at the end to make it all worth it.  There is a lot here that’s similar to the other novels on this list.  The protagonist is not one of the upper classes, she is in awe of a particular family and their estate, and gradually everything goes horrifically wrong for basically everyone.  And yet it was a total and complete bore.  No real mystery, no intrigue, and no chance to get to know why she cared about all this stuff at all.  (Even weirder, the family seemed to be famous 50 years later for no apparent reason.)  I completely forgot to put this on my book list until today and it’s no real surprise.

Some months before I read these I read The Séance by John Harwood and wasn’t fully impressed.  Now that I’ve read many more gothic novels, in retrospect I should have given Harwood more props.  It wasn’t quite The Little Stranger, but it was certainly an excellent entry for the genre.

I didn’t intend to be reading two books by one author at the same time, especially not an author I’ve never read before.  Normally I would think of this as a risky proposition.  I can’t actually remember if I requested the two books from the library at the same time or not.  I think the only reason it happened is because I really needed audiobooks for my car trips and one of this author’s books was immediately available on cd.

The author in question is Colson Whitehead, someone I’ve heard of before.  I remember when his last novel came out but it didn’t quite sound like something I wanted to read.  His new book, Sag Harbor, sounded more up my alley (though the dreaded teenage-summer books can be quite dreadful) and I’d heard he was good so I figured I’d give it a shot.  What really surprised me is that this brand new and well-reviewed book had no requests so I got it right away.  Which meant I went home not only with it, but also with the audiobook of his first novel, The Intuitionist.

The two books are definitely very different.  The Intuitionist exists in Whitehead’s created world, existing probably somewhere like the 50’s, in a city resembling New York.  In the world he crafts, elevators are more than just something you use to travel between floors, they play a grander role in the psyche of society.  Being an elevator inspector, like our heroine, is something to aspire to.  In many ways the book follows established noir patterns.  There is a mystery to be solved, which leads to another mystery, no one is really what they seem.  But I think it’s that new world Whitehead creates that is most interesting.  The protagonist, Lila Mae Watson, is like many of the male PI anti-heroes of noir, proud and cold but still vulnerable to being played by others.  Most interesting, I think, was her tendency to immediately do whatever someone else expected of her, especially when they thought she was someone or something else.  It’s also a book about race, since Lila Mae is one of only a very small number of black inspectors, and the world is certainly one where no civil rights era has yet come to pass.  I liked the loftiness of the novel, though I don’t know that audiobook is the best format for it.  I would occasionally get lost when he cut between scenes or times, but it was still lovely to listen to.

Whitehead pretty much cemented his status as one of my favorite current authors when I read Sag Harbor.  Happily it does not go down the dreaded teenage summer of change path.  Instead it just sets you down inside Benji’s world, lets you know the time (the mid 80’s), the place (Sag Harbor is the black version of the Hampton’s) and his own age (just coming through the middle years of high school, still wearing braces).  You go through Benji’s summer without anything of great magnitude happening.  It isn’t about the summer that changed my life.  It’s just a snapshot of a time and place and person.  It’s a lot of fun to read, not just because of the flashing back to teenage antics–this perhaps more than any book I can remember reading lately reminded me of the indignity of teenage-dom–but because Whitehead has a playful first-person narrative that makes it fun.  I started the book on a plane and was mostly just diving through it.  Fortunately, halfway through I relaxed a little and started paying attention to the narrator’s little asides and descriptions.  In many books these things are tedious, in Sag Harbor every one is of great consequence–perfectly capturing whatever he’s describing and making you laugh, too.  It does kind of feel like the way someone would talk to you while you sat out in beach chairs reminiscing, the way we’d all like to talk if we could.

Like The Intuitionist, Sag Harbor also is a lot about race.  Benji’s family is upper-class, they have a beach house, he wears preppy clothes and likes D&D.  He doesn’t yet realize the disconnect between himself and much of his race, but his older, narrating self does and that dichotomy plays out well.  Benji is not the kid who grows up listening to rappers with street cred (although old school hip hop is just starting to come into being and certainly plays a role) and his naivete is definitely part of his charm and the book’s.

I have already reserved one of Whitehead’s two other novels, John Henry Days, at the library.  I like new discoveries.

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