My good friend the Hamster unwittingly helped launch this blog.  He was visiting Arkansas and we were sitting together at a chicken shack sharing a pipe and talking about books.  “You read all these books, but how much time to do you spend thinking about ‘em?”  His challenge was that I write a blurb about each book I read.  Thus, the blog was born.

Unfortunately, I read books faster than I can write about ‘em.  My desk is littered with books that are awaiting a blog post. In an effort to clear off the desk, I present a quick a dirty assessment of the past few months of also-reads.  I present them in no particular order:

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann: McCann won the National Book Award for this novel, a series of interconnected stories that have as their focal point the famous tightrope walk of Philip Petit between the World Trade Center towers. Compelling stories, compellingly written. Still, I did not find McCann as engaging as this year’s runner up American Salvage (see previous post).

Parasites Like Us by Adam Johnson: Parasites is like two books in one. Three quarters of the book reads like the typical middle-aged man breakdown novel. A college professor of anthropology who is a failure at love and whose career is in the gutter ponders the meaning of life and the possibility of diddling one of his students (the boring stuff of Updike). The remainder of the novel, however, veers into apocalyptic. A cataclysm occurs that only the professor and his students survive, and the book prompts the kind of imaginative musings on the meaning and breakdown of culture that one would expect. A good book, though a bit tedious at times.

The American Painter Emma Dial by Samantha Peale: Peale’s first novel, Emma Dial reads like a first novel. The pacing is skewed, the plot is at time belabored, the language ill-fitting. BUT, I loved this book. The central character drives the reader onward, slogging through all the first-novel idiosyncrasies. As an aside, Samantha Peale was recently featured on one of my favorite podcasts Writers on Writing. Her interview inspires any writer who is trying to see a project through to the end. Check ‘er out here

The Land of Green Plums by Herta Muller: I love to say Muller’s name in a deep resonate monotone, a voice I imagine East German bureaucrats using when stamping passports. Herrr Ta Mew Lar.

Muller is the Romanian-born novelist who won the 2009 Nobel for Literature. Her selection is once again congruent with the Nobel committee preference for the literature of oppression. Green Plums is the only book of Muller’s that I have read, but it’s a doozy of a book. Partly autobiographical, extremely lyrical, the book follows the travails of a group of college students in Romania as they seek to be individuals (who love literature) in a society that does not value the individual. Muller’s writing is hypnotic and vivid. She’ll put a fissure in your synapses.

Ford County by John Grisham: I try hard not to be a Grisham hater. In fact, I kind of like the guy. When I was in grad school (when was I not in grad school, I hear you saying), Grisham was invited as the keynote speaker for the “Christ Haunted South” conference, a meeting that centered on Southern literature, paying a huge debt to a resurgence of interest in Flannery OConner.

Grisham opened his address by stating humbly and plainly that he was not sure why he was invited since his writing is far from literary. I admired his candor.

With Ford County, Grisham hammers the point home. Ford County is Grisham’s first collection of short stories, all of them set in the fictionalized Ford County in the Mississippi Delta. Grisham seems to have the idea of the literary short story firmly rooted in his brain, yet he cannot reach this ideal. I cannot say that I despise the stories in this collection, but none delivers on its promise, and I can almost hear Grisham’s fans screaming, “where’s the lawyer; where’s the intrigue, where’s the cheap moral?”

Tales of Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan: If you want a weirdly uplifting fairytale of a book, read Tan’s Tales . A graphic novel written for a teenage audience but all ages should be able to embrace this fantastical world. One image from the book stands out for me. In my library work, I am always scribbling down bits of words, notes, call numbers on small scraps of paper. I carry these around with me like bills in my pockets till they have been lost. In one tale, Tan imagines what happens to the scraps of paper that we all carry around so casually, the laundry lists, poem scraps, receipts, and love letters. All these things, in Tan’s imagining, join forces and become a thing of beauty.

Read this book sometime. It will only take a few minutes of your life but you’ll want to spend more.

Methland by Nick Reding: On occasion I wander in the world of popular non-fiction. It does not happen very often. Nick Reding’s books, as the name implies, is about the methamphetamine epidemic in rural America. Reding provides not only information but narratives from those most affected. Not something I want on my bookshelf, but certainly a worthy read.

Good People of New York by Thisbe Nissen: Nissen is good. She is a good writer. Her story takes the New-York-Centric novel and stands it on its head…sort of. She does this by setting up these contrasting character studies of folks who are native to NYC and folk who have migrated there. Difficult to say who comes out on top by the end. Either way, Nissen’s story made me feel good. ‘Nough said.

American Romances by Rebecca Brown: This book of essays ranks up there with Annie Dillard for my affections. Brown has more of that post-modern playfulness than Dillard, but both are able to shift from the personal to the factual to the downright absurd in ways that make the reader reopen his eyes and reaffirm her faith. Brown has a doozy of an essay on reading (my drug of choice) called “Extreme Reading.” This is one that every Freshman English student should read. She says:

Every time you read a book you read what you desire
Every time you read a book you make that book your own

I certainly made Brown’s book my own.

Go now and read, my friends.