But don't take my word for it
Despite the heavy emphasis on comics, this is probably one of the most diverse slates of books I've finished over a quarter-or-maybe-more-like-six-to-seven-month period, because the non-comics stuff includes novels, a short story collection, and two different types of nonfiction!
An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin
Wow! I read this forever ago. Okay, this is the one about the art stuff! Got it. As usual, Martin's prose is delicate and often very funny, his characterizations precise. It does sort of go off on tangents about art and art collecting, something Martin obviously knows a lot about, such that at times, I started to sympathize with the philistines who complained about his fancy art-talkin' at that 92Y discussion (I already read that the moderator made many specific references to the book, which most of the audience had not yet had an opportunity to read as it had just come out the day before, but that's not really to do with the book itself, or Martin for that matter). On the other hand, I feel like I learned a little bit about the art world from reading this novel about a gallery worker working her way to the top, or at least the upper middle; occasionally the details feel extraneous or dull, but often they provide an interesting glimpse into a world I would otherwise probably not read about. I probably prefer Shopgirl for its bittersweetness and The Pleasure of My Company for its hilarious narrative voice, but An Object of Beauty nonetheless establishes Martin as a formidable small-scale novelist, not just a funny guy who writes books.
The Complete Bloom County Volumes 3 and 4 by Berke Breathed
Not much more to say about this except that as the collections go on (Volume 5 finishes it all up in the fall), there are fewer strips overall that I haven't seen before, presumably because Breathed was more OK with collecting this era comprehensively, as the strip had really hit its stride at this point. There are still strips here and there I've never seen, and this is probably the best-looking period of Bloom County art; by the time the characters move over to Outland, they start to suffer a little from rococo-overdrawing cartoonist syndrome, especially Opus, whose nose becomes roughly the size of past versions' entire bodies. But in the mid-to-late eighties chronicled here, everything looks amazing. Also: I totally bought an old Opus plush toy off of Ebay. I always wanted one as a kid but I was reading Bloom County books mostly after the strip had ended and several years after peak interest in related stuffed animals. (FYI, Bill the Cat dolls are much, much more expensive on Ebay, and also much creepier looking, and not even in exactly the same way I'd expect a Bill doll to be creepy looking.)
All-Star Superman Volumes One and Two by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely
Movie people have been mulling over how to make a Superman movie for a solid twenty years now, yielding only a Bryan Singer one-off that a lot of people hated (though I really liked) and a Zack Snyder project that, well, who knows what will happen when/if that comes out. I haven't read a lot of Superman comics (though the Death of Superman trade was probably the first legit superhero comic I ever read) but it seems pretty obvious to me, after reading the Morrison/Quitely run of All-Star Superman (sort of akin to Marvel's "Ultimate" line -- similar characters but in off-continuity stories), that someone ought to take this material as inspiration for a Superman movie, much the way Nolan took bits of Year One and The Long Halloween for the new Batman movies. Morrison really utilizes the insane scope possible when you're dealing with a near-invincible man who comes from outer space, but his sci-fi stuff remains weirdly compelling and often exhilarating, unlike the off-the-rails voyages into space that other superheroes sometimes make. These two volumes manage to be epic, fun, and poignant all at once, and made me really understand how you can write great Superman stories that don't just involve his origin, wedding, or death.
One Day by David Nicholls
Is it weird that I was disappointed to find out, upon opening up this impulse purchase that everyone was buzzing about a year or two ago, that the author and characters are British? Obviously I was not paying as much attention to that buzz as I should've been. Also, what is my deal? I like British stuff. I guess I was just looking forward to the story of a not-quite-couple, Emma and Dexter, revisited on the same day every year for twenty years having some American cultural touchstones, especially because it takes place largely during the nineties. As such, this is one of those books where I'd actually like to see the High Fidelity-style transplanted-to-U.S. version (no dice: the movie is from the director of An Education and gives Anne Hathaway an English accent, which she can pull off, and Frump Drag, which I'm not sure she can). Anyway, as I read on, I actually found justification, however faint, for my mysterious Anglophobia: the Modern Britishness of the writing makes a structurally inventive book feel a little familiar, a little like, well, second-tier Nick Hornby. At its best, it quite exceeds that description and, don't get me wrong, I enjoyed this book a lot. The annual single day allows the book's scope to sneak up on you. But there's a slight smugness to some of the cleverness, especially with one of Emma's also-ran boyfriends: he's a wannabe comedian described and characterized, for ninety percent of the book, with such low-key contempt that I started to wonder if Nicholls actually kind of hated the idea of any prospective boyfriend with a sense of humor and without Dex's carousing masculinity (especially strange because the put-downs of the character's attempt to be funny are themselves attempting to be funny). That's a nitpick, though; so much of the story focuses on Emma and Dexter that it doesn't much matter, and the book has an emotional kick that many of Hornby's recent novels have lacked.
Bossypants by Tina Fey
Remember in the nineties when like every single stand-up comedian wrote a book? Weren't the Jerry Seinfeld and Paul Reiser ones like actual bestsellers? And those bestsellers were more or less just transcriptions of stand-up routines minus the delivery and laughter? Wow. What an age. Comedians still write books (I believe Demetri Martin put one out this year, and of course Chelsea Handler has apparently been suffering from an audience-supported delusion that she is a writer, although, to be fair, she may not be funny enough to fall under the "comedians writing books" heading), but at least Tina Fey has a bit more justification, as she has logged more time as a writer, of SNL and Mean Girls and 30 Rock, than as a sitcom star. Her collection of biographical essays and humor pieces has a little bit of that well-I-was-offered-a-book-deal looseness, but because Fey can turn a phrase, and is hilarious, the book is pretty much hilarious, too. I wish some of the pieces and the collection itself had a little more shape imposed on them, or cut a little deeper, but it's still a wildly entertaining non-guilty pleasure. Side note: is this the only Number One Bestseller I've read in the past few years? Possibly.
What Becomes by A.L. Kennedy
My mom got me this short story collection after reading some positive reviews. I read it over the course of a few months, picking up a few stories here and there, and I had mixed reactions to them. Some, like "Edinburgh" (about a shopkeeper dating one of his customers) or "Another" (about a woman's relationships after her husband dies), are lovely and near-perfect. But at other points, Kennedy seems so fixated on getting inside her characters' heads and thought processes that the stories read a bit like stream-of-self-consciousness dithering. This might sound arrogant, but this is one of those books where I read it and think, okay, well, if this is published and acclaimed and all that, then I can pursue writing without worrying that my stories are too interior or self-obsessed, or worrying whether everything I write is absolutely perfect, because while Kennedy is obviously very talented, there are some clunkers alongside the great stuff.
Stiff by Mary Roach
I borrowed this book from Cristin on Easter 2010 and returned it on Easter 2011. In between, I saw Mary Roach speak in Philadelphia; she had moved on to her book about space travel, but it seemed like Stiff, about human cadavers, remained a reference point for her. The reason it took me so long to read it is because the chapters, while they do build on each other in some ways, sometimes read like very interesting magazine articles, which is to say that it's very easy to put the book down after a couple of chapters (also: said chapters are about cadavers. Which I do find interesting but I can only read about the grim/interesting/funny realities of death for so logn at a time). That I read an entire science-based book at all is a testament to Roach's engaging voice.
Scenes from an Impending Marriage by Adrian Tomine and Mr. Wonderful by Daniel Clowes
Here are two fifteen-minute reads from my two favorite comics people (actually, I'm probably averaging the time it takes to read them; Marriage wasn't more than ten). Tomine's slim volume is really just the equivalent of a single comic issue, bound in hardcover to commemorate the nitty-gritty details of planning a wedding. It's observant and amusing, with a lightness missing from much of his more substantial work (it's also fun to spot the areas of overlap between Tomine writing about himself and his other work, where he's not officially writing about himself but clearly has some thoughts in common with his characters). The Clowes book is taken from a weekly serialized strip he did for the New York Times a few years ago, laid out in a hardcover with some allegedly additional material (I read most of the strips in the Times but I couldn't remember how much of this material was new; my guess would be less than twenty percent, but what do I know). Again, it's pretty much the equivalent of a single issue, in this case of Eightball, but with nicer design. Neither of these are really must-owns unless you're big fans of these cartoonists but I enjoyed them both a lot.
Room by Emma Donoghue
It sounds like a gimmick, maybe several gimmicks in one: a novel about a five-year-old boy who's spent his entire life with his mother in a single-room, reinforced shack in the yard of a kidnapping creep, told from that kid's point of view. But Emma Donoghue's book is terrifically gripping, like a psychological thriller filtered through a character study. It is probably the most intense book I read during this period, but it never feels cheap or exploitative.
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
I picked this up not really knowing much about it after a bunch of One Story kids were emphatic in their recommendation, and I was very glad that I did; this is one of the best books I've read in the last few years. Its experimental nature has probably been overemphasized. It proceeds in interrelated short stories rather than sequential chapters, and yes, there is a chapter kindasorta written in PowerPoint. But this doesn't sprawl or topple over with literary ambition. Each chapter, you're very much in the moment and in the world of these characters, revolving vaguely (and not exclusively) around musicians and music-industry people. Egan's writing is clear, unfussy, bracing; basically, you all should read this book. It's pretty great. So can I talk about Jennifer Weiner now? I guess Egan said some stuff that I didn't really take as slamming so-called "chick-lit" but seems to have been taken that way at large, and Weiner called her out on it or whatever. I don't really care about any of that. What bugged me about Jennifer Weiner is her dismissal of this book when judging some kind of annual book contest. Though she picked Egan by default, she noted that "neither book was any fun... Egan’s book seemed more like an exercise in Let Me Show You How Clever I Am than anything as lowbrow as entertainment." Wow. First, I'm not sure where the self-conscious cleverness comes into play with this book. It's really pretty straightforward. It has that one PowerPoint chapter which is actually pretty interesting, and easy to follow. It has a lot of characters? I guess that's "clever"? I don't know. But what's incredible to me is her idea that this book isn't any fun and can't be bothered to entertain anyone; that, to me, sounds like needless, defensive chick-lit advocacy in disguise. I mean, let me get this straight: Jennifer Weiner almost certainly gets more readers and makes more money writing than Jennifer Egan, but she's annoyed that some lit critics and fans like Goon Squad and that it isn't enough of a fun romp? Maybe next Danielle Steele can be brought out to complain about what a bummer Lorrie Moore's work is. My librarian training says that you don't turn up your nose at chick-lit, or mysteries, or romance, or whatever, because reading is reading and reading is also better than not reading. All totally true. But I will say that if Jennifer Weiner is complaining about A Visit from the Goon Squad not being entertaining enough, maybe Egan's snotty "aim high" ideas for lady writers are not so crazy. I certainly have little use for a beautifully written, high-minded bore of a novel where nothing of interest happens. But saying Goon Squad isn't entertaining is like saying that a P.T. Anderson movie isn't entertaining. It's not so much beside the point as it is indicative of a strange, narrow idea of what entertainment is.
At this point, I sort of ran out of books to read. I have a few comics in queue and the ever-present Under the Dome hardcover, but I've been treading water with some F. Scott Fitzgerald stories and vague plans to read To Kill a Mockingbird. Suggestions of books to borrow or ways to abuse the Amazon Prime account are always welcome.
An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin
Wow! I read this forever ago. Okay, this is the one about the art stuff! Got it. As usual, Martin's prose is delicate and often very funny, his characterizations precise. It does sort of go off on tangents about art and art collecting, something Martin obviously knows a lot about, such that at times, I started to sympathize with the philistines who complained about his fancy art-talkin' at that 92Y discussion (I already read that the moderator made many specific references to the book, which most of the audience had not yet had an opportunity to read as it had just come out the day before, but that's not really to do with the book itself, or Martin for that matter). On the other hand, I feel like I learned a little bit about the art world from reading this novel about a gallery worker working her way to the top, or at least the upper middle; occasionally the details feel extraneous or dull, but often they provide an interesting glimpse into a world I would otherwise probably not read about. I probably prefer Shopgirl for its bittersweetness and The Pleasure of My Company for its hilarious narrative voice, but An Object of Beauty nonetheless establishes Martin as a formidable small-scale novelist, not just a funny guy who writes books.
The Complete Bloom County Volumes 3 and 4 by Berke Breathed
Not much more to say about this except that as the collections go on (Volume 5 finishes it all up in the fall), there are fewer strips overall that I haven't seen before, presumably because Breathed was more OK with collecting this era comprehensively, as the strip had really hit its stride at this point. There are still strips here and there I've never seen, and this is probably the best-looking period of Bloom County art; by the time the characters move over to Outland, they start to suffer a little from rococo-overdrawing cartoonist syndrome, especially Opus, whose nose becomes roughly the size of past versions' entire bodies. But in the mid-to-late eighties chronicled here, everything looks amazing. Also: I totally bought an old Opus plush toy off of Ebay. I always wanted one as a kid but I was reading Bloom County books mostly after the strip had ended and several years after peak interest in related stuffed animals. (FYI, Bill the Cat dolls are much, much more expensive on Ebay, and also much creepier looking, and not even in exactly the same way I'd expect a Bill doll to be creepy looking.)
All-Star Superman Volumes One and Two by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely
Movie people have been mulling over how to make a Superman movie for a solid twenty years now, yielding only a Bryan Singer one-off that a lot of people hated (though I really liked) and a Zack Snyder project that, well, who knows what will happen when/if that comes out. I haven't read a lot of Superman comics (though the Death of Superman trade was probably the first legit superhero comic I ever read) but it seems pretty obvious to me, after reading the Morrison/Quitely run of All-Star Superman (sort of akin to Marvel's "Ultimate" line -- similar characters but in off-continuity stories), that someone ought to take this material as inspiration for a Superman movie, much the way Nolan took bits of Year One and The Long Halloween for the new Batman movies. Morrison really utilizes the insane scope possible when you're dealing with a near-invincible man who comes from outer space, but his sci-fi stuff remains weirdly compelling and often exhilarating, unlike the off-the-rails voyages into space that other superheroes sometimes make. These two volumes manage to be epic, fun, and poignant all at once, and made me really understand how you can write great Superman stories that don't just involve his origin, wedding, or death.
One Day by David Nicholls
Is it weird that I was disappointed to find out, upon opening up this impulse purchase that everyone was buzzing about a year or two ago, that the author and characters are British? Obviously I was not paying as much attention to that buzz as I should've been. Also, what is my deal? I like British stuff. I guess I was just looking forward to the story of a not-quite-couple, Emma and Dexter, revisited on the same day every year for twenty years having some American cultural touchstones, especially because it takes place largely during the nineties. As such, this is one of those books where I'd actually like to see the High Fidelity-style transplanted-to-U.S. version (no dice: the movie is from the director of An Education and gives Anne Hathaway an English accent, which she can pull off, and Frump Drag, which I'm not sure she can). Anyway, as I read on, I actually found justification, however faint, for my mysterious Anglophobia: the Modern Britishness of the writing makes a structurally inventive book feel a little familiar, a little like, well, second-tier Nick Hornby. At its best, it quite exceeds that description and, don't get me wrong, I enjoyed this book a lot. The annual single day allows the book's scope to sneak up on you. But there's a slight smugness to some of the cleverness, especially with one of Emma's also-ran boyfriends: he's a wannabe comedian described and characterized, for ninety percent of the book, with such low-key contempt that I started to wonder if Nicholls actually kind of hated the idea of any prospective boyfriend with a sense of humor and without Dex's carousing masculinity (especially strange because the put-downs of the character's attempt to be funny are themselves attempting to be funny). That's a nitpick, though; so much of the story focuses on Emma and Dexter that it doesn't much matter, and the book has an emotional kick that many of Hornby's recent novels have lacked.
Bossypants by Tina Fey
Remember in the nineties when like every single stand-up comedian wrote a book? Weren't the Jerry Seinfeld and Paul Reiser ones like actual bestsellers? And those bestsellers were more or less just transcriptions of stand-up routines minus the delivery and laughter? Wow. What an age. Comedians still write books (I believe Demetri Martin put one out this year, and of course Chelsea Handler has apparently been suffering from an audience-supported delusion that she is a writer, although, to be fair, she may not be funny enough to fall under the "comedians writing books" heading), but at least Tina Fey has a bit more justification, as she has logged more time as a writer, of SNL and Mean Girls and 30 Rock, than as a sitcom star. Her collection of biographical essays and humor pieces has a little bit of that well-I-was-offered-a-book-deal looseness, but because Fey can turn a phrase, and is hilarious, the book is pretty much hilarious, too. I wish some of the pieces and the collection itself had a little more shape imposed on them, or cut a little deeper, but it's still a wildly entertaining non-guilty pleasure. Side note: is this the only Number One Bestseller I've read in the past few years? Possibly.
What Becomes by A.L. Kennedy
My mom got me this short story collection after reading some positive reviews. I read it over the course of a few months, picking up a few stories here and there, and I had mixed reactions to them. Some, like "Edinburgh" (about a shopkeeper dating one of his customers) or "Another" (about a woman's relationships after her husband dies), are lovely and near-perfect. But at other points, Kennedy seems so fixated on getting inside her characters' heads and thought processes that the stories read a bit like stream-of-self-consciousness dithering. This might sound arrogant, but this is one of those books where I read it and think, okay, well, if this is published and acclaimed and all that, then I can pursue writing without worrying that my stories are too interior or self-obsessed, or worrying whether everything I write is absolutely perfect, because while Kennedy is obviously very talented, there are some clunkers alongside the great stuff.
Stiff by Mary Roach
I borrowed this book from Cristin on Easter 2010 and returned it on Easter 2011. In between, I saw Mary Roach speak in Philadelphia; she had moved on to her book about space travel, but it seemed like Stiff, about human cadavers, remained a reference point for her. The reason it took me so long to read it is because the chapters, while they do build on each other in some ways, sometimes read like very interesting magazine articles, which is to say that it's very easy to put the book down after a couple of chapters (also: said chapters are about cadavers. Which I do find interesting but I can only read about the grim/interesting/funny realities of death for so logn at a time). That I read an entire science-based book at all is a testament to Roach's engaging voice.
Scenes from an Impending Marriage by Adrian Tomine and Mr. Wonderful by Daniel Clowes
Here are two fifteen-minute reads from my two favorite comics people (actually, I'm probably averaging the time it takes to read them; Marriage wasn't more than ten). Tomine's slim volume is really just the equivalent of a single comic issue, bound in hardcover to commemorate the nitty-gritty details of planning a wedding. It's observant and amusing, with a lightness missing from much of his more substantial work (it's also fun to spot the areas of overlap between Tomine writing about himself and his other work, where he's not officially writing about himself but clearly has some thoughts in common with his characters). The Clowes book is taken from a weekly serialized strip he did for the New York Times a few years ago, laid out in a hardcover with some allegedly additional material (I read most of the strips in the Times but I couldn't remember how much of this material was new; my guess would be less than twenty percent, but what do I know). Again, it's pretty much the equivalent of a single issue, in this case of Eightball, but with nicer design. Neither of these are really must-owns unless you're big fans of these cartoonists but I enjoyed them both a lot.
Room by Emma Donoghue
It sounds like a gimmick, maybe several gimmicks in one: a novel about a five-year-old boy who's spent his entire life with his mother in a single-room, reinforced shack in the yard of a kidnapping creep, told from that kid's point of view. But Emma Donoghue's book is terrifically gripping, like a psychological thriller filtered through a character study. It is probably the most intense book I read during this period, but it never feels cheap or exploitative.
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
I picked this up not really knowing much about it after a bunch of One Story kids were emphatic in their recommendation, and I was very glad that I did; this is one of the best books I've read in the last few years. Its experimental nature has probably been overemphasized. It proceeds in interrelated short stories rather than sequential chapters, and yes, there is a chapter kindasorta written in PowerPoint. But this doesn't sprawl or topple over with literary ambition. Each chapter, you're very much in the moment and in the world of these characters, revolving vaguely (and not exclusively) around musicians and music-industry people. Egan's writing is clear, unfussy, bracing; basically, you all should read this book. It's pretty great. So can I talk about Jennifer Weiner now? I guess Egan said some stuff that I didn't really take as slamming so-called "chick-lit" but seems to have been taken that way at large, and Weiner called her out on it or whatever. I don't really care about any of that. What bugged me about Jennifer Weiner is her dismissal of this book when judging some kind of annual book contest. Though she picked Egan by default, she noted that "neither book was any fun... Egan’s book seemed more like an exercise in Let Me Show You How Clever I Am than anything as lowbrow as entertainment." Wow. First, I'm not sure where the self-conscious cleverness comes into play with this book. It's really pretty straightforward. It has that one PowerPoint chapter which is actually pretty interesting, and easy to follow. It has a lot of characters? I guess that's "clever"? I don't know. But what's incredible to me is her idea that this book isn't any fun and can't be bothered to entertain anyone; that, to me, sounds like needless, defensive chick-lit advocacy in disguise. I mean, let me get this straight: Jennifer Weiner almost certainly gets more readers and makes more money writing than Jennifer Egan, but she's annoyed that some lit critics and fans like Goon Squad and that it isn't enough of a fun romp? Maybe next Danielle Steele can be brought out to complain about what a bummer Lorrie Moore's work is. My librarian training says that you don't turn up your nose at chick-lit, or mysteries, or romance, or whatever, because reading is reading and reading is also better than not reading. All totally true. But I will say that if Jennifer Weiner is complaining about A Visit from the Goon Squad not being entertaining enough, maybe Egan's snotty "aim high" ideas for lady writers are not so crazy. I certainly have little use for a beautifully written, high-minded bore of a novel where nothing of interest happens. But saying Goon Squad isn't entertaining is like saying that a P.T. Anderson movie isn't entertaining. It's not so much beside the point as it is indicative of a strange, narrow idea of what entertainment is.
At this point, I sort of ran out of books to read. I have a few comics in queue and the ever-present Under the Dome hardcover, but I've been treading water with some F. Scott Fitzgerald stories and vague plans to read To Kill a Mockingbird. Suggestions of books to borrow or ways to abuse the Amazon Prime account are always welcome.