Testdrive Before You... Roadtrip?

I'm heading to the beach tomorrow for a quick weekend on the Jersey shore. I'll be spending two glorious days in a large empty house three blocks from the ocean, and I will conveniently assign myself the bedroom with water views and water breezes so I can wake up, not move, and launch into my books.

The trouble: which books to bring? I only have about 100 pages left in Michener's Chesapeake (review to follow; preview = fantastic), and find myself debating which books make it into the suitcase and which stay. The four contenders are:

Mr. Muo's Traveling Couch - Dai Sijie
Bonk - Mary Roach
The Law of Dreams - Peter Behrens
A People's History of the American Revolution - Ray Raphael

I've decided tonight to read the first chapter of each before committing myself to a weekend one-on-one with the new title of my choosing - much like dating, I would not want to find myself stuck on the Jersey shore with little to do but wallow away the hours with a book (or man) I do not enjoy, let alone relish.

Does anyone else test-drive before a vacation? If not, how do you decide which books ultimately make the cut - and do you ever regret your decisions?

Barnes and Noble + Ebook Sales = Free WiFi for all!

Barnes & Noble has recently announced that they will be making their in-store WiFi free - yes, free, completely free! The argument is that they are fully immersed in the sale of e-books, and want to encourage "e-book browsing" in-store. The result? Free WiFi for me. And you.

Enjoy!

A Long Way Down - Nick Hornby

After finishing the Martin books, I was left with a bit of a book void, which may explain my disappointment with Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down.

It isn't that the book was bad, per se, just that it wasn't nearly as gripping as I thought it could have been. Hornby's story starts off with four suicidal people on the roof of a building, all waiting to jump in privacy. Ultimately, they save each other from death that night and become tied together in ways unexpected and generally inexplicable to their families, friends and the media. Hornby delves into some of the big questions with these four - why are we here? What is selfish and what is selfless? How can we fix those big mistakes we will inevitably make at some point? Where can we draw the line between the personal and the public?

While the book does make you think, which is my ultimate test of a book's quality, it can feel forced at times, with enjoying the present moment, living life to the fullest, learning to forgive yourself, etc. The prose is simple and straightforward, which makes the message easy to appreciate on a fundamental level, but without any one character to relate to or feel any connection to (we are given the choice between a prim old lady with a disabled son, an asshole television star recently out of prison for statutory rape, a somewhat manic teenage daughter of a local politician, and an American ex-pat pizza delivery guy with no ambitions but to get back together with his ex), it is hard to really feel the impact of the answers to these questions.

A pretty quick read, if you'd like to see for yourself. And not altogether a waste of time.

Back to Fantasy

When I lived in France, I devoured Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time Series like there was nothing else in the world to do. All 11 of them in 6 months - the joys of a studio apartment with no television, and lots of daily train rides in and out of Paris. I put away the fantasy genre after that, with the exception of Fables and a few other graphic novels.

But a few months ago, while still on blog hiatus, Jay Franco (yes, same one that recommended Fables) recommended the George R. R. Martin Song of Ice and Fire Series. First of all, follow that link. Martin looks exactly like you would expect a fantasy writer to look. Exactly.

Now on to the books themselves. I found it refreshing to get back into the world of fantasy (and it gave me some street cred at the gaming shows I've been going to for work recently). Martin has a keen sense of detail, which is sometimes to his detriment - he can get so bogged down in details and character development that the story sometimes seems to hover frustratingly in mid-thought. That being said, the details of this world he has created, and the intense, focused characters that he develops skillfully and fully, become crucial to the story when it does finally launch itself forward, and so most readers are able to forgive what seems like confusion in the first book.

*Mild Spoiler Alert* One of my biggest complaints with Jordan is that he doesn't ever kill his characters. All, inevitably, find themselves in some kind of dangerous, sticky situation, and, not surprisingly, pull through with only mild damages to self or mind. True, after a while these damages can pile up, but as of Book 11, no one has actually died. Martin is quite the opposite, sometimes too much so. While it is refreshing to have an author that keeps his readers on his toes, he has almost killed so many characters that he has started to drive readers away - we have no allegiance to any characters remaining because it is too hard to watch (or read) them die. Alas, I am still searching for the author that can find the perfect balance between these two.

Martin's series has been optioned for a series on HBO for which I have high hopes. You can see casting and developments here.

Interesting afterthought -- on his website, George Martin cites Osprey books as one of his best sources for military research, which he uses to develop his worlds when writing. Go Osprey!

Another Blog...

If anyone is interested in military history endeavors, I also blog on Osprey's website blog. Whoop!

Fireflies

It's been quite a while. To ease back into this, I'm starting off with someone else's words. This is from Garrison Keillor's daily email, The Writer's Almanac, which I was turned on to first by my mom and then by my roommate. Here goes:

Fireflies

by Cecilia Woloch

And these are my vices:
impatience, bad temper, wine,
the more than occasional cigarette,
an almost unquenchable thirst to be kissed,
a hunger that isn't hunger
but something like fear, a staunching of dread
and a taste for bitter gossip
of those who've wronged me—for bitterness—
and flirting with strangers and saying sweetheart
to children whose names I don't even know
and driving too fast and not being Buddhist
enough to let insects live in my house
or those cute little toylike mice
whose soft grey bodies in sticky traps
I carry, lifeless, out to the trash
and that I sometimes prefer the company of a book
to a human being, and humming
and living inside my head
and how as a girl I trailed a slow-hipped aunt
at twilight across the lawn
and learned to catch fireflies in my hands,
to smear their sticky, still-pulsing flickering
onto my fingers and earlobes like jewels.

"Fireflies" by Cecilia Woloch, from Carpathia. © BOA Editions, Ltd., 2009. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Kitchen Confidential and Dewey (The Library Cat)

I recently finished two non-fiction titles back-to-back, which is rare for me. Usually I find that I alternate between genres as I read, albeit unconsciously. Although I suppose that these two titles were so vastly different that it isn't, in fact, so surprising. Does anyone else try to rotate genres?

Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Changed the World is the story of just that—Dewey, the small-town library cat who touched the world. Written by Vicki Myron, the librarian of said small-town library, the book evolves into a three-part memoir: Myron's own life, the life of the library in Spencer, Iowa, and, obviously, the life of Dewey, who quite literally fell into the library's arms when it mosted needed him. Despite the fact that Myron is not the most talented of writers, her sentences often forced or somewhat stumbling, she manages to weave together quite cleverly these three distinct yet remarkably overlapping stories. In a matter of pages, she twists the story from one that evokes laughter to one that brings on tears.

Ultimately, the stories require a certain suspension of disbelief, for Myron is truly in awe of the "power" of Dewey and his lasting effects on the Spencer Library. Maybe I'm just overly doubtful, but I personally find it hard to believe that Dewey understood what a video camera was and knew how to behave in it. I do, however, believe in Myron's claims about the changes seen in the library after Dewey's arrival. I just think they came from the people of Spencer themselves, prompted by Dewey's adoption, not the magical powers of a cat. But read it and find out for yourself.

__________________________________________________________

Note that on the cover of Kitchen Confidential, author Anthony Bourdain appears to be holding two swords tucked into his whites. This is not a coincidence, or some cheeky photo. This is an accurate picture of Bourdain's depiction of the kitchen world of New York (and Cape Cod), what he deems the "underbelly" of every restaurant, bar and pub in the city. Like Myron's book, some of Bourdain's writing requires a suspension of disbelief (a grill man grabbing a cast iron pot from the station with bare hands? ESP between the chef and his sous?), but it is belief that I was more than willing to suspend in order to see the kitchen life of Les Halles, and various other restaurants in New York, through Bourdain's reverent and admiring eyes. For although he curses the life, detests some bosses and co-workers, and is quick to judge and dismiss certain characters (notably Emeril Lagasse, for which he apologizes in the introduction and conclusion, both added to the second edition), he also stresses the extent to which this truly is a life of magic.

Sure, it's easy to say that food is magic, that it has some kind of power that none of us can truly understand. But Bourdain's observations go beyond the "mere" food of the restaurant industry, and into the magic of the kitchens themselves. These are captivating, coordinated, magically chaotic spaces where a bustle of what looks like mayhem to any outside results in an impeccably plated dish of fill-in-the-blank, complete with a wipe and a flourish when set on the table. The title can be a bit lengthy in places, but Bourdain has structured it almost more like a series of essays and articles on various topics (with a few certain strings that carry through from beginning to end), and the added dashes of sex, drugs, alcohol and rock-and-roll give it the color it needs to keep you reading. Sound stereotypical? Trust me, Bourdain is anything but.

So I'm sending this one on to my brother, a student in culinary student who has just displayed a shocking new interest in actually reading books, rather than tearing out their pages to roll cigarettes, and hiking off to Les Halles for another memorable dinner.* And breakfast. And lunch. I'll also make it a point to visit some of the other restaurants in the book, and a point to avoid still some others. And everywhere I'll go, I'll be keeping a mind on what's going on behind that elusively swinging kitchen door.

*The first memorable meal at Les Halles was met with the worst service imaginable. So much so that my boyfriend wrote in to Time Out New York's "wish" issue and said his wish was to be treated like a king at Les Halles, where we had previously been treated like garbage. And he won the competition, resulting in a meal (courtesy of TONY) of epic proportions, capped off with a phone call to ANTHONY HIMSELF. Then I just had to read his book.