This one stuck with me. I read it last year and it wouldn't leave me for quite a while. Most of my literary adventures are very private at this point in life... having left classes and discussions behind 20ish years ago. I do have my sci-fi book group but it is as much, or more, social than any actual discussion. That's fine. But for some reason this book hung out in the folds of my brain for months and I had a desire (less than a year later) to re-read it. I cannily conjured a plan to ambush two of my more literate friends from movie club by gifting them the book, thereby creating a splinter book club from movie club!

Even after the second read I'm still not totally sure what it was/is about this one that moved me to re-read it so quickly... and also strong-arm some smart friends into a discussion with me at Skylark on a Tuesday.  TBH even after another read I'm not quite sure... its hard to pin down but at its most fundamental it is human and hopeful and hopeless all at once. So, you know, life. And it's a slice of history I had no idea about before reading (I was also in Mexico City for the first read...). It's lonely. It's sad. But I do I love the whiskey preist for all his flaws written so plain and heartbreaking. 

Graham Greene has always been a name I knew, and knew he was important in the "canon", etc. etc. but had never read a single thing. Then, IDK, two years ago I was eating lunch on a weekday and put on Anthony Bourdain. He's a comfort to me and was a true prince in life and I miss him. So anyhow, I had on Parts Unknown and he is bopping around somewhere in Asia, being in love with the locals as only he can, and then he quotes a passage from The Quiet American, because, of course he does. 

I breezed through that one, The Quiet American, one of Greene's serious novels. It is really great (maybe greater than this one?). Then I read Our Man in Havana, one of his entertainments. (he likes to make the distinction) It is also great in a more mad-cap kind of way. Those two beautiful and interesting books led me to The Power and the Glory. The scenes between the lieutenant and the preist are really what makes it all worthwhile, punctuated by cinematic weather, which I always love. Many of the characters are archetypes to move the plot along (if walking around evading anti-religious authority is a plot... It probably is... No. It is.). I think I do love this book but I'm unsure where the love comes from. I will read it again in a few years. Maybe I'll still love it in a confused way. Maybe I'll see why I love it. Maybe I'll see the flaws more and not love it as much but remember the love I had. Any of those things can happen and I will be elated. Life. Time marches on. Love remains.

Because i still don't know what to say about this book... I'll leave two passages here.

...he began formally to say his goodbyes to the world;

he couldndn't put his heart into it.

This was the last chapter, and in the last chapter things always happened violently.

Perhaps all life was like that -- dull and then a heroic fury at the end. 

Oh god, what to say about this? Took me about half a year to read through it in bits and pieces. I'd get through a portion of violence (true and awful horror treated oh so casually) then not return to it for a few weeks or months until the bitterness subsided. But I was determined to see it through if only to knowingly and silently judge people who praise this book. 

I'm not even sure I engaged the book fully. It was awful (very awful) and beautiful (the prose only sometimes... not the awfulness). While reading, there were sessions that left my body exhausted and my brain blank. This is not my favorite condition to end up, being a husband and father of a five year old. 

I tried to describe my feelings to a friend what the experience of reading this book was like. It was a sunny afternoon and I was having a mezcal (which felt appropriate) and there were only 2 other patrons at the concrete bar. I excitedly compared the book to Link running around in the dark before he manages to wholly light up the dungeon. Just this little guy in green running around seeing only the horror his lantern can illuminate in front of his eyes knowing full well there are other horrors but he can't see them or even imagine them.... then moving on and forgetting the previous horrors to be only in the current horror always. 

He hadn't really ever played Zelda so he just nodded. SMH. I couldn't let it go though, so later I told another friend. He got it. Not sure its a perfect metaphor but feels right to me and I achieved the smug satisfaction of being seen.

So much has been written about this book and discussed. But this is just my personal book log so I don't think there is much more I have to say on it. 

Should you read this book? Probably no. Sorry.

Did I enjoy this book. I dont' know. Probably no. Am I happy I read it? Also probably no. LOL 

But at least now I get to be haunted by the image of the naked Judge forever. 

"He never sleeps. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die."

We read (reread in most cases) Frankenstein for our Holiday book club choice. I read it in high school and again later in college. I think I was more used to reading " Western canon" at that stage of my life. I'm very glad I had that phase. It does a lot for a person... reading those things... in that period of development... but I am decidedly not in that phase now. And I'm pretty glad for it. So, I'm not sure I enjoyed the book as much this go-round. Guillermo del Toro's new version didn't help matters tbh. 

I digress (before I started). I think the "canon" thinking got me thinking about more contemporary Sci-Fi "canon" and what that looks like or could look like. I read enough and try to pay attention enough (or at least some) about what my blind spots are. Octavia Butler was and has been and is still a blind spot so I suggested  Dawn for book club. I didn't know much about her beyond The Parable of the Sower, which I haven't even read. I just know of it. But one of our book club members had already read it and I already had this sick edition of Dawn in my collection so I pushed for it to be our next read. 

After Frankenstein this was a breeze. I zipped through it faster than I have zipped in a while. It was tough in parts and fun in parts and, at least from our little book club limited view, wholly unique. An incomplete list of what we've recently read for book club:

• Methuselah's Children - Heinlein
• Frankenstein - already mentioned
• Dark Matter - no logical reason to be called this...
• Project Hail Mary - discussed here
• Altered Carbon - discussed here
• Scanners Live in Vain - (a personal favorite)
• The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin
• Ringworld - Niven

I'm blanking on the others but there were some other stinkers in there too. Compared to the list above I think only the Cordwainer Smith story compares with actual novel storytelling, though, they are nothing alike in any way. Its tough to escape my lived experience of being a white dude and a lot of the stories above are basically white dude stories. I really loved Dawn for not being that which, of course it wouldn't be, but still I'm glad for it. 

Anyhow, quick synopsis. Earth is destroyed. At least people are destroyed. Few folks have been saved and put to sleep by aliens somewhere out in outer space, but not that far away by todays standards. Lilith, our heroine(?), is awakened by her captors and kept prisoner. This has happened many times before. She manages to endear herself to them so as to become their companion(pet?). She's being groomed to wake up others so they can repopulate earth. Then there's some genetic stuff. Some weird sex (sort of) stuff. Alien to human conflict. Human to human conflict in a fake jungle. It gets weirder from there. 

Recommend! 

I generally try to get the vintage copies of books, especially if the author is not around anymore. No need to give "The Big Five" more money. A quick Biblio, Abe (I know... I know who they are owned by... but at least the booksellers are just regular folks trying to get by), & Bookshop visit can give you vintage/used options if your normal go-to is Amazon. I've even made pen pals of a sort through buying from independent sellers. All around a better experience. 

Anyhow, older paperbacks of this particular novel are pretty cost prohibitive so I ended up with the more recent New York Review of Books edition from someone on Biblio. The George Pelecanos intro to this edition is ok. Short and sweet. He understood the assignment and what makes this a worthwhile read.

That said, I'm not sure that I have too much to say about this one. There is some great dialogue.

"Holy Cats," Jack said. "Did you see this shower? One sprayer up on top,

for on the sides. Man, they must stand in there and just plain go out of their minds. 

An the control aint two handles, it's one that goes from cold to hot."

Its bleak though. Bleak throughout, but the final quarter seems to exist just to hammer home how awful life can be for some people and rich people get everything they want. I could have done without that portion completely. The first bit, in Portland and environs is great though, especially if you are at all familiar with the area. Now that I'm thinking about it (writing about it)... its kind of 3 books or novellas in one. From hustling in the pool halls to prison to domestic(?) life and its trappings... 

It's worth a read if any of that sounds good.  For a much better summary and bio on Carpenter head over to this great substack post.. 

Gemma gave me this book for Christmas. A slim edition of collages married with short essays & poems reflecting upon, as far as I'm concerned, scenes from a life well lived. Or, if not "well lived" definitely LIVED. And it seems thats what stands out for me. Maybe it's a Chicago traint. Most people don't live well or even live at all... (maybe its easier to not want to?) Maybe I don't even. I think at forty four I'm starting to... 

Liesurely thumbing through the pages this past week, a faint recognition grew in the recesses of my memory of these collages; I have seen them, some of them here and there, over the 20ish years I've been in Chicago. The images, the essays, feel very strongly like the fog of early 2000s Chicago to me. The pre smart phone era, the pre dead internet era... before the bans lifted all the smoke from the bars which then settled over my youth in a haze. I never knew who Tony Fitzpatrick was. Though, I think anyone from Chicago, who was looking (or who has been here by choice for 10+ years) would recognize them.

A personal trait I've been trying to reconcile as I grow older is that I'm immediately anti and uninterested regarding books given to me. Given out of context anyways. Over the years I think I've partially connected this to really just being in love with the journey of discovery that comes with loving books and words... (Oddly I really LOVE giving folks books as gifts. The dichotomy is not lost on me.)

I can claim no ownership to any books, of course, but I do feel a sense of ownership and even attach a sense of myself to books. I know others do this, it is not unique. So when I give a book to a friend, family-member, colleague, acquaintance... it is showing them something of myself. It's an easy way to show "who I am" with a wink. Where I've landed on this whole situation is... when people give me books... its sort of like "this isn't me!".... simply because I have yet to read it so how could it be? Then I have a chip on my shoulder which often colors my reaction to the book, preemptively deciding no this is not for me. NICE TRY [friend or partner or coworker]!!

In this case, pass the knife and fork, I am most happily eating a bit of crow (an apt analogy as a third of the works in the book are about birds). 

It is an easy book to read and enjoy, to pick up and open to any page and find something good. I need more books like this. 

Tony Fitzpatrick passed away on October 11th of this year. He was honest in his writing. He looked for good in people but hated assholes and let you know it. A real Chicagoan gone, joining the ranks of Algren, Turkel, Bellows, Brooks, and Dreiser... and on and on.  I only just met him but I miss him. 

A few favorite passages. 

From Winter Cardinal:

In Tokyo, public greenas and parks are for solitude and reflection; you

won't see a gaggle of assholes throwing frisbees and drinking beer. 

From Chicago Winter Rail:

I try to get out to nature more now, to shut out the noise and find what is good.