Book 52 - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest - Stieg Larsson

Woo hoo! Book 52!! This also the second "three-peat" author, having read all three books of the "Dragon Tattoo" series in the course of the challenge.

Book 52 - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest - Stieg Larsson

As the final book of Stieg Larsson's "Dragon Tattoo" opens, Lisbeth Salander is gravely injured after being shot multiple times in the epic battle scene that ends the second book. After being flown by medevac helicopter to Sahlgrenska hospital, emergency surgery is performed to remove a 22 caliber bullet from her brain, and to mend her other wounds. She is no longer the chief suspect in the triple homicide that made her a fugitive in the previous book. The man the police now seek for those crimes is Ronald Niederman, a hulking monster of a man who suffers from a neurological syndrome that prevents him from feeling pain, and who was responsible for inflicting many of the injuries that have landed her in the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital. She is not a free woman, however. She is still a ward of the state, declared incompetent to deal with her own affairs, despite her photographic memory, massive intellect, and prodigious computer skills. She is now also facing assault and attempted murder charges, stemming from her attempts to locate the evil and mysterious Zalachenko, and is being held by police in her hospital room. Zalachenko, who in reality is Salander's father, is lying in a bed two doors away from Salander, recovering from ax wounds inflicted by her in the aforementioned battle. This is the second time he has survived an attack by Salander. The first time was when Salander was a young girl, and Zalachenko was delivering the last in a series of horrific beatings to her mother, this final one landing her in a nursing home for the rest of her life. Young Salander lashes out against her father, and her violent reaction leads to her involuntary committal in a psychiatric hospital and ultimately to her declaration of incompetence.

Locked away in ICU, unable to receive visitors and without access to the internet, Salander is powerless to do battle with forces that wish to lock her away for good. Zalachenko, a Russian agent that defected, has been harbored by a super-secret internal faction within the Swedish Secret Police. For years they have been covering up his crimes, believing his importance as an intelligence asset was such that they were willing to overlook his criminal activity, and knowing that if their secret ever got out, it would be devastating to themselves and to current and former government leaders. Salander knows at least part of the story, and putting her away in a mental institution for good is one of the steps they feel they must take in order to hide the existence of the Zalachenko affair.

People who know Salander know that she is far from incompetent, and this seems to engender a fierce loyalty towards her, regardless of what feelings she may have for them. Mikael Blomkvist, the investigative reporter from the other two books and at one time Salander's lover, is now frequently the object of her scorn. Nevertheless, Blomkvist throws almost all the resources of his magazine behind defending her and uncovering the secret organization that becomes known as "The Section." Dragan Armansky, her former employer, has also devoted much of his security company's resources to the investigation. Several police officers, in the course of their investigation, have become sympathetic to Salander's plight. Even Salander's hacker friends get in the game, once she manages to gain access to the internet from her locked hospital room, and once Armansky uses his connections to make people in the government aware of what is going on, strange alliances start to form between these investigations and those implemented by the government.

Of course "The Section" is also investigating everyone trying to figure out what is known about their organization, and what they will need to do to cover things up. At one point, a member of the Secret Police is trailing a member of "The Section," who in turn is trailing Blomkvist. In her surveillance the Secret Police officer notes that not only is Blomkvist observing his observers, but there is also someone from the Milton Security observing the whole thing.

Like the other books in the series, this is a page-turner. Although it is truly a continuation of the action of the second book, it is no longer a murder investigation, but rather a taut political thriller. The action moves along fast and furious. The plot is complex, but because of the number of separate investigations going on, there is ample opportunity for review when the various entities update each other on their progress.

I have to say, I'm sorry to have to say goodbye to Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist. I guess it's probably better to go out this way. Larsson wrote three fantastic books. There's not a clunker in the bunch.

Book 51 - Naked - David Sedaris

This is the first of two "three-peats" for the year - authors of whom I have read three books in this year's challenge.

Book 51 - Naked - David Sedaris

As I am in a hurry to finish my entries, and I have written about Sedaris' books twice before, I am going to refer you to my previous entries for Barrel Fever and When You Are Engulfed in Flames for any background information for this funny and entertaining author.

This is his second book, and all the essays seem to be autobiographical, dealing for the most part with his childhood and college days. However, with much of Sedaris' work it becomes difficult to tell where the weird and quirky truth ends and the weirder and quirkier exaggeration begins. For example in "A Plague of Tics," Sedaris describes a series of obsessive-compulsive tics he supposedly exhibited as a youngster that are so comically outlandish as to defy credulity. On the other hand the mystery of who is wiping their butt with the bath towels, related in the story "True Detective," is made more plausible by the presence of their strange greek grandmother, Ya-Ya. The mother of Sedaris' father, her strange habits are described in detail in "Get Your Ya-Ya's Out." Ya-ya barely speaks english, her hygiene is questionable, she boils expensive meats, kneads bread dough on the dirty kitchen floor, scavenges plants from the neighbor's yards and seeds from their bird feeders, and holds David's mother in scorn, refusing to call her by name and referring to her simply as "the girl." In light of her strange behaviors, why she seems to be dismissed as a suspect in the bath towel incident is inexplicable.

Sedaris' early family life is a rich source of weirdness. There's his father, who is so fanatical about golf that in the story "The Women's Open," he ignores the fact that his daughter is experiencing her first period. They are watching a live golf match with nationally known players, and he is so engrossed in the game that he foists the responsibility for making sure his daughter is OK off on a complete stranger in the crowd. In "Dinah, the Christmas Whore," David's sister drags him off on a mysterious mission on Christmas Eve to a seedy part of town to rescue a one of her coworkers, who also happens to be a prostitute, from an abusive boyfriend, and winds up bringing her home to meet the family. His mother seems to be the genetic source of David's sardonic wit, and she frequently uses her sharp tongue to cut her husband or his mother down to size.

As you must have gathered by now, I really like Sedaris' work. It exaggerates truth and finds truth in exaggeration, and is weird, quirky and funny. As I have warned before, his work is not for the prudish. His humor is dark and twisted, he talks openly about sex and bodily functions, and he is unabashedly gay. If any of this offends your delicate sensibilities, you might want to stay away from his work. However, if you can hang, you will find in him one of the most gifted comedic writers of our time.

Book 50 - Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton

I know, I know. This entry is kind of light. I'm trying to wrap-up though, so I don't have time to write long reviews.

Book 50 - Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton

Wharton's book tells the tale of Ethan Frome through the eyes of a nameless narrator who arrives in the small New England town of Starkfield on an extended business trip. He wonders about the mysterious man he sees around town from time-to-time. The man seems to have all of the life sucked out of him and appears to be much older than he is. After unsuccessful queries of the townspeople, he learns the story directly from Frome himself when he is forced to stay at Frome's home due to a fierce snowstorm that makes travel impossible.

The narrator flashes back to Frome's youth. Frome is married to Zenobia, a woman whose constant hypochondria has made her almost unbearable to live with. Frome falls for her cousin Mattie, who has moved in with them in order to help the physically frail Zenobia with her housework. Mattie turns out to be a poor housekeeper, and is subject to constant criticism by Zenobia. Frome turns out to be a poor philanderer, failing to put the moves on Mattie, but making it so obvious to those around him that he is smitten that his wife decides to send Mattie away and get a live-in housekeeper that is more competent, and perhaps less attractive to her husband. Frome is unwilling to stand up to his wife, and is he is not brave enough to run away with Mattie, rationalizing that he lacks the resources to divorce his wife and set up a new life for him and his new love. He finally exercises one act of defiance: driving Mattie to the train station. While this act allows him the opportunity to make his feelings known, it ends in tragedy, and gives the book's ending its ironic twist.

I enjoyed the book, despite the unlike-ability of some of the characters. Zenobia is a selfish, shrewish woman, and Ethan is an unambitious, spineless man. In a way, they seem deserving of their fate, tragic as it may be.

Book 49 - Deep Blue Home - Julia Whitty

I'm a tree-hugger. There. I've said it. I'm a tree-hugger. Not in the radical activist way, mind you. I don't believe in spiking trees, and you are not going to catch me naked on the street corner, espousing vegan philosophy with PETA activists. You won't even catch me storming a Japanese whaling vessel in a rubber dinghy. Nonetheless, I'm a tree-hugger. And some of you are too.

You know who you are.

You are a person who knows that nitrogen runoff from industrial farming techniques are creating huge dead zones in our oceans, where nothing can live.

You are a person who knows that our planet is being stripped of its biodiversity, threatening the balance of earth's ecosystems and threatening the existence of mankind itself.

You are a person who thinks it is irrational to think that seven billion people burning fossil fuels does not have an impact on the planet's ecology.

Come on. Say it with me. My name is "***SAY YOUR NAME***," and I'm a tree hugger.

This book is for you.

Book 49 - Deep Blue Home - Julia Whitty

Julia Whitty is a former documentary filmmaker who writes on environmental issues for magazines such as Harper's and Mother Jones. The Fragile Edge, her first book on oceans, has won several awards for creative non-fiction including the Pen USA Award and the Kiryama Prize. In Deep Blue Home, Whitty explores the ecosystems of the world's oceans and the importance of these ecosystems to the survival of life on this planet.

Whitty opens the book by flashing back more than twenty-five years to her days working on Isla Rasa, a tiny island in the Gulf of California. Here she studied the thousands of migratory birds that flocked to the island: elegant terns, least-storm petrels, and the peregrine falcons that hunt them. Later she takes us to the coast of Newfoundland, where she augments her encounter with a giant sea turtle by explaining how these cold-blooded animals have adapted to freezing cold water temperatures by pumping warmer blood from the middle of their bodies out to their extremities. She tells of a close encounter with a sperm whale, so close that she had to contemplate whether she would be dragged under when it sounded. When she introduces us to a new species of animal she makes reference to its position on Red List, a list that tracks the endangerment status of thousands of species.

The book is not just facts about various animals in the ocean, however. She discusses the life-cycle of the ocean, and how it affects the life-cycle of the entire planet. She discusses global water circulation patterns such as thermohaline circulation, and how desalinization due to melting ice caps threaten to shut down this vital circulation pattern. She discusses how industrial fishing techniques have diminished the populations of many species to the point where it is unsure that they can recover. She discusses the problems of this overfishing in the context of trophic cascade, the idea that over-fishing a particular species has ramifications for other species, both those that hunt that species, as well as those that are hunted by it.

Reading this book is somewhat like listening to the narration of a nature documentary without the picture. Whitty's vivid descriptions allow your mind's eye to fill in the video portion, and her passion for the subject exudes from every page. She evokes Steinbeck and Melville in her narrative, and she deftly interweaves tales of the world and the sea from Indian, Norse, Roman, and Greek mythology, reminding us that the importance of protecting the sea is not a knowledge that we have not yet gained, but rather one we have forgotten. At the beginning of this post I said this book was for tree-huggers, but maybe more importantly, it is for those people who aren't.

Book 48 - Candide - Voltaire

I fear these last few entries are going to be even more of a mess than usual. I apologize in advance, but I'm desperately trying to make the deadline. I'm currently reading my last book, but I still have four more entries to write up!

Book 48 - Candide - Voltaire

Voltaire's satire Candide tells the tale of its eponymous antagonist, a man who blindly embraces a philosophic viewpoint of The Enlightenment known as optimism. Based on the ideas of the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz, optimism embraces the idea that God has made a perfect world, and any imperfection we find in it is due to a lack of knowledge of the greater good that imperfection serves. In other words, we live in "the best of all possible worlds" and "all is for the best." Voltaire ruthlessly satirizes this point of view, heaping upon the characters maladies and misfortunes of such a comically gruesome and pointless nature as to defy any explanation as to what greater good they might serve.

Candide is a young man who lives in Westphalia in the castle of a Baron, where he studies philosophy under the tutelage of Pangloss, a fervent proponent of the school of optimism. Caught making out with the Baron's daughter, Cunégonde, he is banished from the castle. Shortly thereafter he is conscripted by the Bulgars to fight. When he is caught away from his regiment, supposedly out for a stroll, he is accused of desertion and is flogged so brutally that every bit of skin is flayed from his back. Candide recovers, however this is but the first in a series of horrible misfortunes the characters of the book encounter, each one more comically gruesome than the last. Candide's adventures take him all over Europe and as far as the New World, wear he encounters El Dorado, a remote, almost inaccessible land where there are no wars, no one is imprisoned, and the streets are littered with gold and jewels. Candide eventually leaves El Dorado with a vast fortune, but what he does not squander he winds up losing to swindlers and thieves. It is this loss of fortune more than any of the physical grief he has encountered which causes Candide to question his blind optimism.

The characters of the book are deliberately underdeveloped and unrealistic. They are caricatures, stand-ins for various points of view. Pangloss serves as a surrogate for Leibniz himself. Candide is comically naive and impressionable, blindly following the teachings of Pangloss. Cunégonde represents idealized womanhood in Candide's eyes, but while she professes feelings for Candide, she is quick to discard those feelings and use her sexual assets to her advantage. Martin is a pessimist who sees only bad in the world, which seems almost as extreme as Pangloss's relentless optimism. It is only Cacambo, a valet that Candide acquires on the way to South America, who shows any real honesty and depth of character.

This was a short but interesting read, although one has to do a little background research to fully appreciate it. This book is a relentless attack on Leibniz's ideas, and so therefore a cursory knowledge of those ideas is helpful in understanding some of the humor. I think it was helpful that the version I read was a modern translation by Peter Constantine, and had a well-written introduction which provided some of the background necessary to appreciate the text. I've never read any other Voltaire, and while the satire and the use of pun-ish names seem a bit heavy-handed at times, I'd have to say that overall I enjoyed the book.

Book 47 - As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner

I'm still having trouble keeping up with the posts, but as of this entry, I'm about to start book 51!

Book 47 - As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner

Addie Bundren is dying. Outside her window, her son Cash is employing his carpentry skills in the construction of her coffin, working methodically but steadily in hopes that the coffin will be ready before she passes. Her daughter, Dewey Dell, waves a fan to help her bear the summer heat, while two of her other sons, Darl and Jewel, debate whether they can embark on a delivery and return before she dies.

So opens As I Lay Dying, a book many consider to be Faulkner's best. It tells the tale of Anse Bundren's misguided quest to fulfill his wife's dying wish and bury her in Jefferson, some 40 miles away. They must make the trip by mule-drawn wagon, and in addition to Addie's coffin, Anse expects his five children, four of which are at least teenagers, to ride on the wagon as well.

The trip seems doomed from the beginning. Addie dies soon after Darl and Jewel leave for their delivery, and Cash is not yet finished with the coffin. A storm washes out the bridge that spans the river they must cross. When they finally do set out, Addie's body has already been baking in the hot July sun for a few days, and buzzards have picked up the scent. A failed attempt to cross the river, one that proves fatal for the mules and very nearly fatal for Cash, sets them back even more. People try to convince Anse to just bury her at home, but Anse insists on respecting her dying wish, no matter how much risk it presents for the living.

With this book, Faulkner expands on his multiple-narrator technique employed so well in The Sound and the Fury (see my review here), which was published the year before. This time, rather than four, there are fifteen narrative voices taking turns telling parts of the story from different perspectives. This unique technique allows the reader to develop his or her impression of the characters from the way they react to the events and the other characters around them. The narration is not always temporally linear, and often different narrators overlap and re-tell events from another point-of-view. At one point Darl is telling us about events that he could not possibly be witnessing, as he is miles away at the time, and Addie herself narrates a chapter posthumously, although it is not clear if she is speaking to us from the grave, or if Faulkner has time-shifted to a point where Addie is still alive.

There is much dysfunction in the Bundren family, and many contradictions between the outward appearances of the characters and what is really going on in their minds. Anse seems dedicated to Addie and the mission to bury her, but he reveals himself to be lazy and selfish, allowing others to put themselves in harm's way for the mission, and seeming to be more concerned with acquiring a set of false teeth for himself than for the safety of others. Dewey Dell is secretly pregnant, and her thoughts are dominated with sexual reveries and thoughts of what she is going to do about her situation, rather than with grief for her mother. Jewel outwardly seems withdrawn to the point where some believe that he doesn't care, but inside is grief manifests itself as anger and he turns out to be the chief defender of the coffin, often going to foolishly heroic lengths to ensure its safety. Darl seems to be the most reliable voice at the beginning, but grief and the stress of the journey get the better of him and he descends into madness. Cash barely speaks at the beginning, concerned only with the construction of the coffin, and whether it is balanced when it is on the wagon. Ironically, as the book progreses he emerges as the book's most lucid and rational narrator.

I really liked this book. Initially, the constantly changing narration threw me off, and I found myself re-reading passages because the first time I was still in the mindset of the other character, but once I got used to it, I really enjoyed the shifting voices. As with any of these Deep South books, one has to struggle a bit with the peculiarities of Southern dialects, but one gets used to that as well. I've only read two of Faulkner's books in my life, both of them in this challenge, but I have to say this is my favorite of his so far.

Book 46 - Last Words - George Carlin

One of the many inexplicable contradictions of my childhood was that while I was not allowed to buy Beatles records because I would be feeding their drug habits, I was allowed to buy George Carlin albums. Although I suspected it at the time - based on the long hair, explicit language and drug references - after reading this book I now know for sure that I was feeding his George's drug habit.

Book 46 - Last Words - George Carlin

For those who don't know, and I can't imagine who you might be, George Carlin was a famous counter-culture comedian most noted for his routine, "Seven Dirty Words You Can Never Say on Televison." This autobigraphy, assembled with the help of Tony Hendra and published posthumously, chronicles almost every aspect of George's life: his nearly aborted birth, his days growing up in New York City, his troubled stint in the Air Force, and the ups and downs of his comedy career.

The book covers Carlin's early days of radio, and how parlayed his radio career into a stand-up comedy routine, first with a partner, and then on his own. It talks about the television appearances of the sixties: Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, and of course The Tonight Show, where he appeared so frequently that he became one of the guest hosts for Johnny's frequent days off. It tells of his dissatisfaction with his career and the period of self-sabotage that preceded his emergence as the counter-culture comedian of Class Clown. His routines of this period, in which he pointed out absurdities in language, sports, and the Viet Nam war, made him one of the founders of the brand of observational comedy that seems so commonplace today. Like Lenny Bruce, who George admired, he blazed new trails in what was being said on stage. His "Filthy Words" routine, a sequel to the "Seven Dirty Words" bit, was the foundation of the U.S. Supreme Court's "Federal Communications Commision vs. Pacifica Foundation" decision which officially established the FCC's authority to regulate indecent material on the airwaves.

George is riding high (in more ways than one), but success brings problems to his life. There are problems with drugs, taxes, and his heart. His wife suffers drinking problems, and after winning the battle with the bottle, she loses a battle with cancer. Things are looking bleak once again.

But once again Carlin emerges from the ashes. He embraces new management and capitalizes on a relationship with HBO. He starts to become more politicized. He also comes to an important realization: "laughter is not the only proof of success." This liberating thought allows him to engage the audience without worrying about getting a laugh with every sentence, and would shape his comedy until the end of his career.

I hate to say it, but unless you are really a fan of Carlin's, you probably don't have a reason to read this book. Yes, there are some revelations, but nothing earth-shattering, unless it would surprise you to hear that Carlin had a drug problem, or couldn't keep his finances straight. He dishes a little dirt here and there when it involves a direct interaction between him and a celebrity, but he doesn't seem to have a ton of celebrity friends, and he's not really one to tell tales out of school. I'm also not the biggest fan of comedians analyzing their comedy, although Carlin's brand of humor was so bound up with who he was that it's not nearly as painful here.

I'm not sorry I took the time to read it, though. As a fan, it allowed me to relive some memories, to fill in some gaps in what I knew about him, and to better understand the reasons his comedy took the directions that it did. If you are really a fan it might do that for you as well.

Book 45 - The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon

I have to admit, I stumbled across this selection while looking for good short books to read. With the deadline fast approaching, I can't get bogged down with too many 500+ page books. The first thing that caught me was the title. It sounded to me like a children's book. It turns out that Haddon has a well-established career writing for children, and this was his first effort at adult fiction. The second thing that grabbed me was that the narrator of the book suffered from autism. This definitely piqued my curiosity. Combine this with a deadline-friendly 226 pages, and I knew I had my next reading selection!

Book 45 - The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon

This book is quite unique in that it's narrated by a boy who appears to have some form of autism, perhaps Asperger's syndrome. His condition is never specifically mentioned, but he attends a special school, has trouble spotting emotion in facial expressions, exhibits rocking behavior, and becomes unnaturally preoccupied with things. He is also hyper-observant, which causes him great stress in new situations, because he has way too much input to process. This elicits seizure-like behavior in which his body and brain shut down. He is very good with mathematics though, and wants to sit for a math exam that will allow him to attend university, something nobody at his school has ever done.

His name is Christopher John Francis Boone, and he lives alone with his father, his mother having died of a heart attack some time before. The story opens with Christopher finding a dead dog with a large garden fork sticking out of it, lying in his neighbors yard sometime around midnight. Naturally he is the prime suspect, this strange boy who goes to the special school and who is found standing over the dog's dead body. He is innocent of course, so he decides then and there that he is going to find out who really killed the dog. After his initial efforts at investigation lead to trouble with the police, his father forbids him from continuing his inquiry. Christopher persists however, chronicling his efforts as a school project which ultimately turns into this book. His investigation leads him to uncover another mystery, one that involves him much more personally, and which leads him on a terrifying solo train journey from his home in Swindon to London.

I liked this book. Christopher's inability to read people's emotions combined with his unique way of processing information creates an interesting perspective on the most uninteresting things. Something as simple as getting on an escalator or riding a subway train becomes an adventure filled with wonder and terror. While the author makes no claims that this book is an accurate depiction of autism - in fact he has received some criticism that it is not - it does bring to light the challenges presented to parents of children with special needs, how each individual succeeds or fails at these challenges, and the strain this places on interpersonal relationships.

Book 44 - The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

Although this selection is an international bestseller, and has been translated into 67 different languages, I'd never heard of it until I started the challenge. While discussing books that I was planning to read with a friend, she told me that this was one of her favorite books of all time, and suggested that I include it in my reading list. Unfortunately, she passed away this past summer, before I got a chance to read it. I figured I owed it to her to include it in the challenge.

Book 44 - The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

The Alchemist is a fable about pursuing your life's dream, or as the book calls it, your "personal legend." Coelho's tale, like most good fables, is a simple one. It tells of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd who has a recurring dream about finding a great treasure near the Egyptian pyramids. He meets a man who calls himself the King of Salem, and who claims his purpose is to encourage people to follow their personal legend. The man informs him that this recurring dream is Santiago's personal legend, and tells him that he must follow it. Santiago is reluctant at first, but the man seems to have mystical powers and seems to know many things about Santiago that he couldn't possibly know, so Santiago decides to sell his flock and embark on the journey.

He suffers many great setbacks along the way. More than once he loses everything he owns. He faces death and injury at the hands of thieves and warring desert tribes. Along the way, he meets an Englishman studying alchemy, from whom he learns the value of knowledge. He meets a two hundred year old alchemist, who teaches him the value of wisdom, how to listen to his heart, and how to connect with the Soul of the World. He meets Fatima, who he immediately recognizes as the love of his life, and who loves him so deeply that she is willing to let him go to pursue his personal legend. Ultimately he finds the treasure he seeks in the place he least expects it to be.

The book's beauty truly lies in it's simplicity. While there is much mysticism, the plot is simple, the language straightforward, and the truths it puts forth are pure. Follow your dream. Listen to your heart. Connect with the world around you. These messages resonate with many people, so I can understand why it is a hugely popular book.

With the challenge deadline approaching, I almost always have a book with me, just in case I find myself with a bit of downtime and want to read a few pages. I was approached more than once by complete strangers who saw me with this book and felt compelled to come up to me and tell me what an inspirational book it was, and how much I was going to enjoy reading it. One person noted that my copy was a library book and informed me that once had I read it, I was going to want to buy a copy for myself, so I could read it over and over again. While I may not share their level of enthusiasm, I still have to say that I found the book to be a most enjoyable read, and I certainly wouldn't rule out a repeat read at some point in the future.

Book 43 - Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain

Jeez, I'm so backed up. I just finished book 46, so that's three more to write about after this one...not to mention six more to read and write about...

Book 43 - Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain

Kitchen Confidential is Anthony Bourdain's autobiographical look at the life of a professional chef in the (mostly) New York restaurant business. Bourdain starts with his childhood experience on a transatlantic ocean liner, where he gets his first taste of vichyssoise, and starts to understand the experiential nature of good food. Once he arrives at his destination, France, he is still reluctant to be adventurous, ignoring the French dining experience for the most part and sticking to hamburgers and fries, until one day his parents make him and his brother wait in the car while they enjoy one of the finest restaurants in France. Feeling left out of what he believes would have been another vichyssoise-type experience, it is then that he starts on the path that he is well-known for: trying anything edible, no matter how strange it might seem. He discovers his love of food, and when he grows older, after knocking around at Vassar for a short while, he drops out and goes to Cape Cod, where he gets his first taste of the restaurant business. Starting as a lowly dishwasher, he soon graduates to food preparation and working the line. He eventually attends the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), and when he's done he manages to land a job at New York's famous Rainbow Room. Here he "makes his bones," learning to handle a high-volume and high-stress kitchen.

Bourdain tells it like it is, or at least like it was for him. He paints the early kitchen crews as merry pirate bands, looting and pillaging and taking no prisoners. They are pits of anarchy, full of sex, drugs and rock and roll. Is that steak not done yet and the rest of the food is ready? Throw it in the Fryolator! Cut your finger? Wrap a towel around it and keep working! Need to grab something out of the oven, and no towel handy? Use your bare hand! Bourdain's kitchens, for the most part, are drug-fueled pressure cookers, brimming with stress and yelling and swearing and sexism. He berates vendors, gathers intelligence on employees, and poaches staff from other restaurants. He speaks distainfully of the types of failed restaurant owners, and boasts of his ability to spot the warning signs of a failing restaurant.

Then, deliberately contradicting himself, he presents the kitchen of Scott Bryan, the head chef of Veritas. Bryan's kitchen is the antithesis of almost everything Bourdain has described. Everyone is in pristine whites. The kitchen is busy, but there is no yelling, swearing or male posturing. Each dish is carefully constructed from scratch and beautifully plated. The owner is a perfect example of one of Bourdain's failed restaurant owner types - someone who didn't know the business prior to getting into it - but he is highly successful and runs a tight ship.

The book is very entertaining, even if Bourdain comes across as arrogant at times. He is a good storyteller, and the stories he tells make for good reading. You can see his passion for food in his writing, and while he might not be the greatest chef in the world, it's clear that he is passionate about what he does. Plus, it's fun to hear him slam Emeril LaGasse and Bobby Flay, two of the food networks first big stars, even if it seems like sour grapes for achieving greater celebrity than he did. If you have ever worked in a restaurant, or if you are a restaurant customer who's always wondered what goes on in the back of the house, you will get a kick out of this book.

Book 42 - Bright Lights, Big City - Jay McIerney

I'm a little backed up on the reviews. I finished reading this earlier in the week, and I finished reading another today, which I will try to write up before the weekend is done. Still, I've got a long way to go to meet my deadline, and a very short time in which to do it.

Book 42 - Bright Lights, Big City - Jay McIerney

Like Fight Club, which I reviewed very recently, this is another story of a man caught up in a self-destructive spiral, except this time it is not violence and mayhem, but rather drugs and debauchery that feeds this decline. The story is set in the 80s in New York City, and the main character - to be honest, I'm not sure if his name is mentioned - is a fact-checker at a big New York magazine. His fashion model wife has left him, and rather than go home to an apartment full of reminders of what he has lost, he has taken to nightly benders with his friend Tad Allagash. Tad is an insatiable womanizer, clubber, and cocaine user, and he drags our protagonist from club to club, always looking for a place where there might be more action or a better party.

As you can imagine, these self-destructive sprees are taking their toll on his professional life. He stops caring about his work. He comes in late, leaves early, sneaks naps, takes long drinking lunches in the middle of the day, and makes mistakes in his work - a very bad thing for a fact-checker. His lack of sleep and prodigious drug use combine to feed his obsession with his ex-wife, and when he learns that she is back in New York, he makes a desperate but failed attempt to contact her. Also for reasons we don't initially understand fully, he is ducking calls from his brother, who does not yet know that his wife has left him. It is not until his brother finally catches up to him that we understand the full depth of his pain.

I liked the book. Maybe it's because I would have been about the same age as the protagonist at the time it was set. There is also something interesting in the narrative voice of the novel. It is written entirely in second person. For example, the opening lines of the book are:

"You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy."

This, to me, heightened the feeling of being inside the protagonist's head, while at the same time emphasizing the emotional detachment that the character is feeling.

So go ahead and check it out. I never got around to watching the movie, which starred Michael J. Fox as the lead and Kiefer Sutherland playing the role of Tad. McInerney wrote the screenplay for it though, and I've been told that it's reasonably faithful to the book, so if you don't want to invest the time in reading, but the story still sounds interesting, it might be worth checking it out.

Book 41 - The Neon Bible - John Kennedy Toole

I was having a conversation about books with someone not too long ago, and she mentioned a book that she had been meaning to read called The Neon Bible. I had never heard of it before, so I whipped out my trusty Blackberry and quickly Googled it. It turns out that the author was none other than John Kennedy Toole, author of A Confederacy of Dunces. I had never known that he wrote anything aside from his brilliant posthumously released satire, which earned a Pulitzer Prize for literature. I ran to the library the next day to check it out.

It turns out that he wrote this book when he was sixteen years old, apparently for a writing contest. Toole's mother, who fought so long and hard to get A Confederacy of Dunces published, found this earlier manuscript and wanted to publish it as well. Louisiana's Napoleonic code specified that the rights to the manuscript also belonged to some other relatives (they had surrendered these rights to the first book), and Toole's mother did not wish to share with these people. She went so far as to assign a trustee to keep the manuscript from being published after her death, but eventually lawsuits forced the trustee to relent, and the book was finally published.

Book 41 - The Neon Bible - John Kennedy Toole

The Neon Bible tells the story of David, a boy growing up in a small rural town in the Deep South, during the 1940s. The story is told through a series of recollections the boy has while riding a train to an unknown destination. He flashes back to life as a young boy, and tells of quality time spent with his aunt, a former actress and singer. His father loses his job and they are forced to move up into the hills, where the soil is thick clay in which hardly anything will grow, and in which the foundation of their house shifts when the rain softens it. The father, who he does not care much for, and who does not care much for him, spends all his money on seeds and tries in vain to grow food. Eventually the father goes off to the war, and when he is killed the boy's mother slips into madness, frequently visiting the garden even after it has become overgrown.

Being a small southern town, religion figures heavily in his memories, but it is often shown in a self-righteous and hypocritical light. He tells of his dealings with Mrs. Watkins, the female half of a holier-than-thou couple, who as his school teacher has it in for him from the start, unjustifiably singling him out for perceived bad behavior. Mr. Watkins, the teacher's husband, seems frequently to be trying to remove a book from the library or stop a show on moral grounds. There is also the revival tour of a charismatic preacher that comes into town, and divides the existing preacher's congregation, and there is the neon bible for which the book is named, a glowing sign hanging over the church that is visible from his house in the hills.

While the book is surprisingly well-written considering the age of the author at the time, it is much more of a novelty than a novel. It is an adolescent piece by an author who would later produce great work but too little of it, leaving us wanting more. In that respect, people who are big fans of A Confederacy of Dunces might be interested in this book to catch another glimpse of the potential of this author. However, if you are uninitiated and want to see what all the fuss about this John Kennedy Toole is about, stick with A Confederacy of Dunces.

Book 40 - Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk

There's less than a month to go, and I've still got twelve more books to read. I read eleven last month, so it's doable, but it's going to take some work. I guess I need to shut up and get to the review.

Book 40 - Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk.

The first rule of Fight Club is: "You don't talk about Fight Club."

The second rule of Fight Club is: "You don't talk about Fight Club."

The narrator of this novel can't sleep. He works in a corporate job coordinating product recall, plugging numbers into a spreadsheet that weighs the cost of the recall against the likelihood that people will get hurt or killed and sue. And he can't sleep. No, it's worse than that, he can't feel. He goes to support groups for ailments he doesn't have and finds cathartic release through the suffering of others. This works at first, and for a while after one of these episodes he can seemingly close his eyes and get some rest, but eventually it's not enough – once again he can’t sleep.

Then he meets Tyler Durden. Tyler shows him a whole new way to feel alive, through the physical pain of bare-knuckle brawling. Tyler and the narrator start Fight Club, an underground fighting match where ordinary men from all walks of life come to beat each other’s brains out. Two men to a fight. One fight at a time. Fights last as long as they have to. If it’s your first night at Fight Club, you have to fight. No exceptions.

For a while this works. The narrator has never felt more alive as right after a fight, but Tyler is not satisfied. He first expands and franchises Fight Club, and then uses it as a recruitment tool for Project Mayhem, which uses violence and mischief to create anarchy in hopes that what remains after society falls will at least be better than their current existence.

This was Chuck Palahniuk first published effort, and it’s a great one. It is wonderfully wicked book, full of brutal satire. Many people might be turned off by the large amount of graphically described violence, but really that’s what the book is all about: the characters are using this violence to escape their seemingly pointless lives – even if just for an evening - and feel something, even if it is mind-numbing, bone-crushing pain. When this is no longer enough, it almost seems logical that Tyler would export this idea to dealing with the general public, using mayhem to try to shock them out of their day-to-day existence.

I never saw the movie, except for a clip or two here and there, so I don’t know how true it was to the book. So much of this story revolves around what’s going on with the narrator and his thoughts about his job, his insomnia, and his relationships with Tyler and Marla. There’s a reason he remains nameless, but I won’t say what it is. I have already said to much. Remember, no matter what, "You don't talk about Fight Club."