Just Say No! to The Da Vinci Code!

Thought I'd try something a little different today.

For work, I usually try to keep up with the book reviews, but I got months behind. This week I caught up with the June & July Publishers Weeklies (8 issues), and I thought I'd share the highlights, the books that interested me. (You can learn the most interesting things just from reading reviews. For instance, from a review of a bio of Alice Walker by Evelyn C. White: At eight years old, "Walker was shot with a BB gun and left disfigured and blind in one eye, and her father was refused a ride to transport the injured girl into town and swindled out of $250 by a white doctor." Can you believe that? Shameful.) I'll never have time to read all these, but I hope to find time for a couple, at least.

In the Book-about-Books category (which for some reason I'm ALWAYS drawn to):

• Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books by Aaron Lansky and A Reading Diary: A Passionate Reader's Reflection on a Year of Books by Alberto Manguel, that old pro of the Book-about-Books genre. But the one I'm most excited about, perhaps more than any other on the list, is The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World by A. J. Jacobs. He read the whole Encyclopedia, and then he wrote a book about what he learned. Cool! Reminds me of another book I've wanted to read, Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything.


• Somewhat related is a book about records--The New York Times Essential Library: Classical Music--A Critic's Guide to the 100 Most Important Recordings by Allan Kozinn--which could be useful on the old home reference shelf, and a book showcasing graphic artists: McSweeney's Quarterly Concern #13--You heard about this issue, right? A sampling of the best in comics artists today? It's been written up left and right.


• And a book about movies--Who the Hell's In It: Portraits and Conversations by Peter Bogdanovich: one of the film-geekiest directors around writes about great actors. Another one for the home reference shelf!

In the provocative thesis category:

• In The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, Jeremy Rifkin argues that the EU is pursuing a much healthier vision of human life than we Yanks are. (I keep wondering why we're stuck with the 40hr work week, little vacation time, and crappy health care, so I'm sympathetic to this argument from the start.)


• The Jewish Century by Yuri Slezkine has a fascinating thesis: "modernization is about everyone becoming urban, mobile, literate, articulate, intellectually intricate.... Modernization, in other words, is about everyone becoming Jewish." There, you don't even need to read that one. You've got conversation fodder right there!


• Last Chance to Eat: The Fate of Taste in a Fast Food World by Gina Mallet. Fancy, expensive restaurants turn me off, but the idea of learning to cultivate our tastebuds, of taking the time to really appreciate the finer simple things in life appeals to me more and more. Sounds like this woman knows food pleasure. Books like this seem to be on the rise, and with Fast Food Nation being such a whopping success, I think there's hope for us. (Yet another thing to follow Europe's example on--banning Frankenfoods and the like.)

Literary with a Twist (this is the kind of review that most appeals to me):

• In The Plot against America, Philip Roth turns to alternate history! He portrays a WWII-era USA turning down the path of anti-Semitism and fascism.


• Of The Ghost Writer by John Harwood, PW says: "Sly nods to spooky literary spinsters—Henry James's Miss Jessel and Dickens's Miss Havisham—set the tone for this confident debut, a gothic suspense novel with a metatextual spin."


• The Falls by Joyce Carol Oates sounds like one of her most interesting books yet. Will I finally...take the plunge?


• I was never interested in Prague, one of those books that seemed made for unimaginative book clubs, but Arthur Phillips' new book The Egyptologist sounds like great, interesting fun.


• I've been wanting to read something by quirky, dark sf/fantasy writer China Mieville for a while, but his books are very long. Damn him! He keeps racking up great reviews! Iron Council is the latest.


• The Nameless Day: The Crucible Book One by Sara Douglas sounds like a cool historical fantasy ("evil is afoot in medieval Christian Europe").


• Dark Voyage by Alan Furst, apparently a specialist in WWII fiction. This one revolves around a Dutch sea captain and it sounds good. I've been wanting to read some Patrick O'Brien--maybe I'll read this after.


• Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell--shortlisted for the Booker. A literary puzzle novel, and some say its narrative pieces don't cohere. I read the first few pages and thought it was fun, so maybe I'll be a sucker for the literary hype.

Miscellaneous:

• Buddy Cooper Finds a Way by Neil O'Boyle Connelly sounds refreshingly offbeat: a down-on-his-luck wrestler (paid to take falls), supernatural subplots. Could be fun!


• John James Audubon: The Making of an American by Richard Rhodes also intrigues me. It's a beautiful book. I'm starting to get into birds, but I'm much too lazy to get up early enough for the birding tours in town. Here we get stunningly gorgeous paintings of birds, and a great life story, too.

Short Story Collections:

• There's When the Nines Roll Over and Other Stories by David Benioff; SF legend Gene Wolfe's Innocents Aboard: New Fantasy Stories, a mix of horror and fantasy. (Another review, of a Locus Awards coll., mentioned his "The Death of Doctor Island."); and the "folkloric" Mother Aegypt: And Other Stories by Kage Baker.

Negative, or, It's Gonna Take a Lot of Convincing!:

• If the popularity of Gregory Maguire's books wasn't bad enough, now there's Madeleine Is Sleeping by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, which sounds like a pointless perversion of the classic kids' book character. The word "flatulent" is in the review. Puh-lease.


• Then there's The Inner Circle (great cover) by T.C.Boyle, which sounds like a hit job on Kinsey, a man who moved our understanding of sexuality ahead immeasurably, in no small way paving the way for acceptance of people who love those of the same sex. Boyle tells his story from the pov of Kinsey's assistant, who is called upon to help K. "research" homosexuality, partner-swapping, etc. Boyle--an incredibly talented guy (some of his shorts are brilliant)--once again relies on the lurid to sell books. (What's up with the sudden interest in Kinsey? There's a movie coming out, too.)