UPDATED June 27: So, two more days left, then back to Chi-town for a coupla weeks, then back on the road. Ah, the glamourous life of the sportswriter. Anyone know anything fun to do in Toronto?
So: some reviews of the books I have taken with my on my travels (and left all over the place!)
NETHERLAND by Joseph O'Neill: This is the best book I've read so far this year, and it is fully deserving of the rave reviews it received in the Times, TLS, NYRB and et al. Briefly, it tells the story of an ex-pat whose marriage dissolves after 9/11 and finds solace in New York county cricket. He becomes entangled with a rather shifty gent named Chet Ramkissoon, who has the ambition of building a giant cricket arena in the New York brownfields, and somewhere along the way he realizes that he has been conned into becoming a driver for this man's numbers racket. There really is very little plot to the book, but I guarantee you that you wont care. While a great many references might fly over the non cricket buffs' heads, I also can assure you that if you know nothing about this gentle, majestic sport, your enjoyment of it will not be impeded in the slightest. (If you do, you will catch a lot of in jokes.)
So: Why should you read a book about bush cricket in New York? Because, as others have pointed out, it's the best book, to date, about the days after 9/11 and how people in the USA reacted to the event. It's also a great story of the many communities that surround us that we tend to know very little about. [e.g.: Chicago has a flourishing cricket community, and yet I dare say that no one in SGCH has ever seen a match.] Finally, the writing is brilliant. O'Neill is a rare one, a guy who is able to set up very evocative scenes simply, avoiding overwriting and pretention. That's harder to do that you might think.
This is good stuff. Spend the $25 and get it.
SERVE THE PEOPLE by Yan Lianke: This slim novel came out about seven years ago in China, and was immediately surpressed. (The "blurb" from the Chinese Information Ministry, faithfully included with the volume, is worth the price of admission alone.) It survived because it was passed around as a samizdat on the Net and then smuggled out of the country. One can see why the Party didn't like it: This fable is a pungent satire of life at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution (1967) and is made all the more powerful by the fact that is also feels very true. SERVE THE PEOPLE ostensibly tells the story of an army drone who takes Mao's slogans -- one of which is the title -- a little too literally, landing him in a torrid affair with his commanding officer's lonely wife. Where other books about life under Communism (see the next title) play up the paranoia and robotic thinking for chills, this one plays it for laughs, taking some of the more absurd ideas of Maoism to their logical extremes. It also is quite revealing in its descriptions of the corruption and despair that existed at the time, and the lengths people would go to get in dutch with the Party. You can read it in a sitting, but you'll remember it.
CHILD 44 by Tom Rob Smith: This is a straight-up thriller that reads as if it is (or was?) destined for an afterlife as a big-budget movie. The subject matter -- child murders in the Stalinist state of 1950s Soviet Russia -- is grim, and is based on a real case. Now, I tend to read these things with a mental grain of salt, if you will. I happen to like the genre -- what I call the "bored businessman in the airport" book -- and this is a cut above many of them. The plot is pretty simple: an MGB agent, fighting to keep his life and job in the maniacally paranoid year of Stalin's death, discovers a mass murderer is killing children around Moscow and rural Russia. Stalin's theory, however, holds that crime springs from inequality and capitalism, so officially (and this is true) the crime rate in Russia was zero. Figure in Stalin's relentless purges and you have a climate where everyone is surveilled and many disappear. Eventually, Leo's investigation gets him in trouble, and he and his wife are purged to the hinterlands where they discover more gruesomely killed kids. From here, the plot becomes more and more implausible, but I'm not giving away anything by letting you know that in the end, Leo triumphs.
So: is this book "good," even by my low standards? Yeah, it is: Some of the interactions Smith writes about -- especially between Leo and his wife, and Leo and his superiors in the MGB -- ring very true. [I should note that since I wrote a book that dealt somewhat with this period as well, I can vouch for the historical authenticity as well.] I did think that as the book unraveled (and it does) a great deal of the tension is lost, particularly because Smith gives away the tell in the first five pages. Anyone with an eye for the genre will get it at page six, and might put down the book entirely. I also didn't think Smith was as evocative of the paranoia of the time as I would have liked: His characters seem, as I noted, more like figures on a screen, and we're left to fill in a lot of gaps. I never got any of the real sense of claustrophobia and terror that did really exist at that time despite the fact that the narrative has a great many hurdles. That allowed, I enjoyed it, and I admire Smith's plain-spoken prose, which is a rarity in the genre.
THE NECROPOLIS RAILWAY
LOST LUGGAGE PORTER: Both by Andrew Martin: This is kind of an offball series -- my publisher puts it out, actually! -- about an Edwardian-era railway detective and his quick, alluring wife. Jim Stringer is a country boy who comes to London in 1903 to make good on the rails. He has rather inflated expectations of railway work and what the life of an engineer is like, stoked by the popular press of the time. He soon finds out, as we all do, that things just don't work out that way.
Both books are grounded in early 20th century railway history; there was indeed a funeral railway and all the details he gives about trains and yards are very, very accurate. This both good and bad. If you are fond of historical fiction, especially old London and the sewers and caverns therein, you'll find lots of nuggets. If you're not really into trains, well, you might want to give these a pass. As pure mysteries, they're pretty poor. In fact, the first book's resolution makes little to no sense, but there you go. If I had to compare them to anything, it would be the cozies genre that fills up the likes of Ellery Queen Magazine. Nothing wrong with that, but not my cup of tea as I prefer an actual mystery to be solved rather than narratives that just kind of wrap up. However, Stringer and his wife (who goes by "the wife" most of the time, which is irritating, but her name is Lydia) are good characters, and pretty honest. These books are also a quick read (a plus should you be actually riding on a train) and Martin is an enjoyable writer. Get em at the library, or do what I did, and buy them for 1 each on Amazon.
JACKIE ORMES: The First African American Woman Cartoonist: This is a coffee-table sized book I checked out of a local library when I had a brief travel pause, and whle the catalogue itself is serviceable, the illustrations are great. Ormes wasn't just the first black, female cartoonist, she was the only black, female cartoonist of her day, and without her, the pages of the Chicago Defender and the Pittsburgh Courier would have been much blander indeed. Her lasting claim to fame was "Torchy" but she also had a big merchandise hit in the 1950s with "Patty Jo and Ginger," which spawned a popular doll of the same name. Interestingly, her cartoons were overtly political at a time when women -- especially black women -- were expected to keep their mouths shut. Ormes' politics would get her into trouble with the FBI at one point, but that didn't dissuade her. Good stuff, though I wish more of her original art had been found; some of the reproductions are shabby. Also, some of the copy in the catalogue is laughably bad. The person who assembled it is primarily a doll collector, and while you get a great deal of info on the "Patty-Jo" doll series, you get little sense of the historical currents of her time, nor of the circles she moved in.
THE NO. 1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY by Alexander MCCall Smith. I had put off reading this series for ages, primarily because it was endorsed by Oprah. I have to admit, I did myself a disservice. Smith's hero, Precious Ramontwse is a "traditionally built African woman" (her words) running the only female-owned detective agency in Botswana. Smith, who grew up in Rhodesia, obviously knows the country and people very well, and his affectionate and canny portrait of life in the country is accurate and funny. These aren't mysteries in the classic sense, more like broad fables. But they are also cunning, and as Precious would say, "moral." Good stuff.
A PERSON OF INTEREST by Susan Choi -- Just started this one. I have to confess that I bought Ms. Choi's first book, AMERICAN WOMAN, which is a fictional account of the Patty Hearst case and never finished it. It sounded like something that would be right up my alley, but it wasn't, and I'm not really sure why. Anyhoo, this book is about an mathematics prof at a small college who sees his next-door neighbor blown up by an IED. Because the prof is a) a jerk and b) autistic (that's my assumption, anyway), he somehow becomes ensnared in the FBI's search for the killer. So far, it's OK. Ask me again in another 100 pages.
So: some reviews of the books I have taken with my on my travels (and left all over the place!)
NETHERLAND by Joseph O'Neill: This is the best book I've read so far this year, and it is fully deserving of the rave reviews it received in the Times, TLS, NYRB and et al. Briefly, it tells the story of an ex-pat whose marriage dissolves after 9/11 and finds solace in New York county cricket. He becomes entangled with a rather shifty gent named Chet Ramkissoon, who has the ambition of building a giant cricket arena in the New York brownfields, and somewhere along the way he realizes that he has been conned into becoming a driver for this man's numbers racket. There really is very little plot to the book, but I guarantee you that you wont care. While a great many references might fly over the non cricket buffs' heads, I also can assure you that if you know nothing about this gentle, majestic sport, your enjoyment of it will not be impeded in the slightest. (If you do, you will catch a lot of in jokes.)
So: Why should you read a book about bush cricket in New York? Because, as others have pointed out, it's the best book, to date, about the days after 9/11 and how people in the USA reacted to the event. It's also a great story of the many communities that surround us that we tend to know very little about. [e.g.: Chicago has a flourishing cricket community, and yet I dare say that no one in SGCH has ever seen a match.] Finally, the writing is brilliant. O'Neill is a rare one, a guy who is able to set up very evocative scenes simply, avoiding overwriting and pretention. That's harder to do that you might think.
This is good stuff. Spend the $25 and get it.
SERVE THE PEOPLE by Yan Lianke: This slim novel came out about seven years ago in China, and was immediately surpressed. (The "blurb" from the Chinese Information Ministry, faithfully included with the volume, is worth the price of admission alone.) It survived because it was passed around as a samizdat on the Net and then smuggled out of the country. One can see why the Party didn't like it: This fable is a pungent satire of life at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution (1967) and is made all the more powerful by the fact that is also feels very true. SERVE THE PEOPLE ostensibly tells the story of an army drone who takes Mao's slogans -- one of which is the title -- a little too literally, landing him in a torrid affair with his commanding officer's lonely wife. Where other books about life under Communism (see the next title) play up the paranoia and robotic thinking for chills, this one plays it for laughs, taking some of the more absurd ideas of Maoism to their logical extremes. It also is quite revealing in its descriptions of the corruption and despair that existed at the time, and the lengths people would go to get in dutch with the Party. You can read it in a sitting, but you'll remember it.
CHILD 44 by Tom Rob Smith: This is a straight-up thriller that reads as if it is (or was?) destined for an afterlife as a big-budget movie. The subject matter -- child murders in the Stalinist state of 1950s Soviet Russia -- is grim, and is based on a real case. Now, I tend to read these things with a mental grain of salt, if you will. I happen to like the genre -- what I call the "bored businessman in the airport" book -- and this is a cut above many of them. The plot is pretty simple: an MGB agent, fighting to keep his life and job in the maniacally paranoid year of Stalin's death, discovers a mass murderer is killing children around Moscow and rural Russia. Stalin's theory, however, holds that crime springs from inequality and capitalism, so officially (and this is true) the crime rate in Russia was zero. Figure in Stalin's relentless purges and you have a climate where everyone is surveilled and many disappear. Eventually, Leo's investigation gets him in trouble, and he and his wife are purged to the hinterlands where they discover more gruesomely killed kids. From here, the plot becomes more and more implausible, but I'm not giving away anything by letting you know that in the end, Leo triumphs.
So: is this book "good," even by my low standards? Yeah, it is: Some of the interactions Smith writes about -- especially between Leo and his wife, and Leo and his superiors in the MGB -- ring very true. [I should note that since I wrote a book that dealt somewhat with this period as well, I can vouch for the historical authenticity as well.] I did think that as the book unraveled (and it does) a great deal of the tension is lost, particularly because Smith gives away the tell in the first five pages. Anyone with an eye for the genre will get it at page six, and might put down the book entirely. I also didn't think Smith was as evocative of the paranoia of the time as I would have liked: His characters seem, as I noted, more like figures on a screen, and we're left to fill in a lot of gaps. I never got any of the real sense of claustrophobia and terror that did really exist at that time despite the fact that the narrative has a great many hurdles. That allowed, I enjoyed it, and I admire Smith's plain-spoken prose, which is a rarity in the genre.
THE NECROPOLIS RAILWAY
LOST LUGGAGE PORTER: Both by Andrew Martin: This is kind of an offball series -- my publisher puts it out, actually! -- about an Edwardian-era railway detective and his quick, alluring wife. Jim Stringer is a country boy who comes to London in 1903 to make good on the rails. He has rather inflated expectations of railway work and what the life of an engineer is like, stoked by the popular press of the time. He soon finds out, as we all do, that things just don't work out that way.
Both books are grounded in early 20th century railway history; there was indeed a funeral railway and all the details he gives about trains and yards are very, very accurate. This both good and bad. If you are fond of historical fiction, especially old London and the sewers and caverns therein, you'll find lots of nuggets. If you're not really into trains, well, you might want to give these a pass. As pure mysteries, they're pretty poor. In fact, the first book's resolution makes little to no sense, but there you go. If I had to compare them to anything, it would be the cozies genre that fills up the likes of Ellery Queen Magazine. Nothing wrong with that, but not my cup of tea as I prefer an actual mystery to be solved rather than narratives that just kind of wrap up. However, Stringer and his wife (who goes by "the wife" most of the time, which is irritating, but her name is Lydia) are good characters, and pretty honest. These books are also a quick read (a plus should you be actually riding on a train) and Martin is an enjoyable writer. Get em at the library, or do what I did, and buy them for 1 each on Amazon.
JACKIE ORMES: The First African American Woman Cartoonist: This is a coffee-table sized book I checked out of a local library when I had a brief travel pause, and whle the catalogue itself is serviceable, the illustrations are great. Ormes wasn't just the first black, female cartoonist, she was the only black, female cartoonist of her day, and without her, the pages of the Chicago Defender and the Pittsburgh Courier would have been much blander indeed. Her lasting claim to fame was "Torchy" but she also had a big merchandise hit in the 1950s with "Patty Jo and Ginger," which spawned a popular doll of the same name. Interestingly, her cartoons were overtly political at a time when women -- especially black women -- were expected to keep their mouths shut. Ormes' politics would get her into trouble with the FBI at one point, but that didn't dissuade her. Good stuff, though I wish more of her original art had been found; some of the reproductions are shabby. Also, some of the copy in the catalogue is laughably bad. The person who assembled it is primarily a doll collector, and while you get a great deal of info on the "Patty-Jo" doll series, you get little sense of the historical currents of her time, nor of the circles she moved in.
THE NO. 1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY by Alexander MCCall Smith. I had put off reading this series for ages, primarily because it was endorsed by Oprah. I have to admit, I did myself a disservice. Smith's hero, Precious Ramontwse is a "traditionally built African woman" (her words) running the only female-owned detective agency in Botswana. Smith, who grew up in Rhodesia, obviously knows the country and people very well, and his affectionate and canny portrait of life in the country is accurate and funny. These aren't mysteries in the classic sense, more like broad fables. But they are also cunning, and as Precious would say, "moral." Good stuff.
A PERSON OF INTEREST by Susan Choi -- Just started this one. I have to confess that I bought Ms. Choi's first book, AMERICAN WOMAN, which is a fictional account of the Patty Hearst case and never finished it. It sounded like something that would be right up my alley, but it wasn't, and I'm not really sure why. Anyhoo, this book is about an mathematics prof at a small college who sees his next-door neighbor blown up by an IED. Because the prof is a) a jerk and b) autistic (that's my assumption, anyway), he somehow becomes ensnared in the FBI's search for the killer. So far, it's OK. Ask me again in another 100 pages.
VIEW 8 of 8 COMMENTS
I e-mailed Matt & Troy when I saw they initially called you "Tracker," and I can see they corrected that, dawg.
Next ale's on YOU.