Recently in Reading Category

For my junior-year literature seminar, my professor chose several works of science fiction for us to read. At first I was leery. A science fiction seminar sounded dangerously trite to me. I considered transferring out of that section into a seminar with a more conventional syllabus. I only stayed because nothing else fit my schedule.

I didn't much like science fiction. Unlike most nerdy, geeky, teenage engineer wannabes, I pretty much detested it. I could never understand what all my nerdy high school friends found so enthralling about science fiction. They snorted the stuff. I thought the whole genre was crap. No, worse than that. It was stupid crap.

But after reading Earth Abides, Stand on Zanzibar, The Left Hand of Darkness, and even the monumentally pretentious, self-important Dune, I discovered science fiction wasn't all crap. You could have reasoned, intelligent discussions. The seminar motivated me to seek out more quality science fiction.

So when this book was published, I bought it. Shikasta sounded so interesting from the cover. I recognized the author's name, Doris Lessing. It was published by Alfred A. Knopf, not Dell. Even the cover looked interesting. Surely this was quality science fiction.

But I could never get into it. Despite several attempts, I found the book dry and boring and pretentious. For me, Shikasta failed as fiction, science or otherwise. Undaunted, I then bought this book, the second in Lessing's Canopus in Argos: Archives series. I hoped that by having a series of books, I'd be compelled to read the first, move on to the second, and not be out $40.

Nope, didn't work. I now had two dry and boring science fiction books from a dry and boring science fiction series. The books were just more crap from the science fiction genre. I eventually pitched both. I decided I'd never again waste my time looking for - let alone reading - science fiction.

Today Doris Lessing was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Shows you what I know. If I had only realized that Lessing's dry, boring science fiction was Nobel-Prize-quality literature! I guess the Swedish Academy sees more in Shikasta than I ever did. Am I mortified. So today, if you were to ask me my opinion about science fiction, what would I say? That's easy.

"Yeah, it's crap. Nobel Prize-winning crap."
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I finished Cormac McCarthy's The Road over the weekend. It was a Christmas present I had just gotten around to reading. At 242 pages and with McCarthy's spare, minimalist approach to writing, The Road took me little more than a day to read.

The Road is so grim and desperate I don't know I could recommend it unless I knew you were already a McCarthy fan. The story takes place on an earth after some great nuclear holocaust, in a nuclear winter not too far into the future. All life save for a few wretched humans - most marauding cannibals - is extinguished. Ash fills the atmosphere blocking the sun and blows relentlessly throughout the landscape. Snow and rain fall much of the time.

We follow a man and his son - good guys they call themselves - as they travel a lonely road to the coast. The mother has already "checked out." They love each other and care for each other, scavenging for food, trying to stay warm. But in the desolate and hopeless world created by McCarthy, you have to wonder whether morality, compassion and caring have any meaning at all, whether love has become an anachronism. McCarthy does his best to convince us compassion has no meaning, love is an anachronism.

I like McCarthy and have read a couple of his other novels. But for me, though The Road makes its point successfully, it will be a while before I care to visit such a bleak, impossible world again.

McCarthy is an acquired taste. Your mileage may vary.
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I just read the review for Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin from the New York Times Book Review. James M. McPherson wrote the review. In case you don't know James McPherson, he is one of America's pre-eminent US historians and quite possibly the leading expert on the Civil War. Some McPherson quotes about Goodwin's book:

"Having previously offered fresh insights into Lyndon Johnson, the Kennedys and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Doris Kearns Goodwin has written an elegant, incisive study of Lincoln and leading members of his cabinet that will appeal to experts as well as to those whose knowledge of Lincoln is an amalgam of high school history and popular mythology."

"Lincoln's "political genius" enabled him to herd these political cats and keep them driving toward ultimate victory. How did he do it? Goodwin deals with this question better than any other writer."

"Within that sphere Goodwin has brilliantly described how Lincoln forged a team that preserved a nation and freed America from the curse of slavery."

Heady praise. I loved No Ordinary Time and I was already looking foward to reading Goodwin's new book. McPherson's praise only makes her book that much more enticing.
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I sit here working, trying to concentrate, but voices abound inside my head. Random thoughts flit through my mind: "a meeting tonight," think I; "you need shaving cream," whispers my brain pan; "prepare for camping merit badge," says one voice; "stop daydreaming," scolds another.

Then a giant Wizard of Oz voice breaks through them all, screaming inside my head with fury and intensity. I could tell it had been lurking all day, waiting to pounce at just the right time, waiting until I had built up not a little smug satisfaction, waiting until I was literally bathing in a tub of self-righteous indignation. This was a voice I recognized, one of those many voices inside my head that delight in reminding me just what a goddamn moron I can be.

"MAYBE HE JOINED A PENNSYLVANIA UNIT, YOU IDIOT! Back in those days, each state had their own militias! Maybe McCullough was right and you were wrong!!!! I'll bet that never occurred to you!! Maybe Tench Tilghman moved from Maryland to Philadelphia to go into business with his uncle and he joined a Pennsylvania militia unit when the Revolutionary War began! Maybe that's why McCullough called him a "Pennsylvanian"!!! Did you ever think of that, bozo?"

I go back to work. I've learned to completely ignore the voices inside my head.
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PS. In case you're interested.

I've been reading 1776 by David McCullough. I love history particularly American history from the colonial and federalist periods. I devoured McCullough's John Adams. And even though 1776 is not as long or as detailed as some of his previous works, McCullough's sweeping narrative of the events that crucial year - you wouldn't think the siege of Boston could be made interesting - pulls you along nonstop.

Last night I was reading his conclusion to the Battle of Long Island. On August 27, the rebels (us) got their asses kicked. Washington had been woefully out-generaled; his first attempt at open field battle was a failure against the better-disciplined Redcoats. It was a rout. Now the Continental Army was stuck in Brooklyn, backs against the water, the British Army on the other side, and the British Navy just down the river waiting for favorable winds so they too could join in the assault. Washington's army desperately needed to get back to New York to avoid annihilation. Somehow, miraculously, during the night of August 29, Washington managed to ferry 9,000 troops across the East River to Manhattan without the British finding out. To succeed, the evacuation required near total silence.

Writes McCullough on page 187:

"At about nine o'clock the troops with the least experience, along with the sick and wounded, were ordered to start for the Brooklyn Ferry landing, on the pretext that they were being relieved by reinforcements. But of this the soldiers near the front lines knew nothing. 'The thing was conducted with so much secrecy, ' wrote another of the Pennsylvanians, Lieutenant Tench Tilghman, 'that neither the subalterns or privates knew the whole army was to cross back again to New York.'"

*sigh*

David, David, David. I am so disappointed in you. Pennsylvanian Tench Tilghman? Pennsylvanian Tench Tilghman!?! You might as well stick a knife in my heart and break it off. As any Maryland schoolchild knows Tench Tilghman is from Maryland. Born and bred in Talbot County on Maryland's Eastern Shore. And Tilghman wasn't just a nobody during the Revolutionary War, he went on to become Washington's aide-de-camp. Valley Forge, Yorktown, through thick and thin. That sort of thing. How could you get that wrong? Tsk, tsk, tsk.

David, are some of your other facts in this book wrong? I'm not really sure what I can believe from you now. Was Washington's horse not really named Gumball? Did Nathanael Greene not really wear ladies underwear into battle? Did Henry Knox not really drive back from Ticonderoga in an Abrams tank?

I just don't know what to believe anymore.
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Some time ago, A. J. Jacobs took up the quixotic quest to read the Encyclopedia Britannica from cover to cover. All 30 volumes. He succeeded and lived to tell about it. Jacobs then proceeded to write a book about his exploits. The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World enjoyed a certain well-received response from the book press. Amazon.com listed it in its "Top 50 Editor's Picks for 2004." I saw other book reviews that commented on Jacob's book favorably.

The one dissenting opinion came from the New York Times. The Times wrote what had to be the most excoriating review I have ever seen of a book. At the time, I ignored the review and decided to keep on reading it.

I should have listened to The Times.

I seldom bail on a book. The last one was Master and Commander. But after 100 pages, Jacob's book has become the most inane thing I have ever read. He fancies himself a latter-day Dave Barry and fails miserably. His letter-by-letter descriptions of things he finds Britannicaly interesting begins to wear woefully thin. It has finally gotten to the point where I find time running backwards whenever I am reading it. The Know-It-All now rests on my basement bookshelf never to be browsed again.

Reading the Encyclopedia Britannica is more interesting.
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I've been done in. Done in by what has to be the most tediously boring book I've read in a long, long time. Master and Commander is only the second book in the last 20 years that I've given up on simply because I don't like it. (Not to be confused with books I haven't finished reading yet. I have several with bookmarks firmly wedged midway between the covers. And while these books remain unfinished, I have every intention of returning to them one day.)

With most books, I scrutinize the dust jacket, read portions in the bookstore, look at the preface, and so on before making the purchase. Consequently, I'm almost never burned by a book. If I decide to buy it, I rarely have to give up on it. My skill at (in this literal instance) judging a book by its cover has become nearly inerrant. And it irks me to have to give up on a book that I've chosen to read: all that time and money wasted.

Master and Commander was an impulse buy. I had looked through it and the others in the series (There are 20!) at various times but never could get excited by them. It wasn't till I saw the movie trailer that I decided to get it. I figured if the trailer looked that good then the book couldn't be half bad.

Boy was I wrong. The book - at least the 200 pages I've read - is all bad. I don't read many novels. And when I do I have a particular fondness for novels that take place in times gone by. I like to be immersed in the cultures and societies of long ago while some ripsnorting yarn takes place. Witness my love of Sherlock Holmes.

On the surface, Master and Commander would appear to fit the bill. It takes place onboard the HMS Sophie of the British Royal Navy during the early 19th Century at the height of Britain's sea power. The two main characters - Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin - are personable enough. But the author has chosen to pack this book to the brim with the peculiar cant and jargon of sailing ships and sailors. For page after page we learn about the various names of the sails, ropes, timbers, and rooms and cavities onboard sailing vessels. Sails go up, sails go down. Men pull on this rope, men haul on that rope. The ship goes 1 knot faster, the ship goes 1 knot slower. Enough! Even the companion dictionary I bought - which is much more entertaining than the book it explicates - hasn't helped. There are just too many words to look up, too many terms to keep straight, to make reading this book anything but a chore. The author, Patrick O'Brian, exhibits a pedantry in his writing I've rarely encountered before. Together with the (so far) near absence of anything interesting or exciting happening dooms this book to the recycling bin. (Sorry but bookshelf real estate in my house is too valuable to waste on a paperback I know I'll never finish.)

Guess I'll just have to wait for the DVD.
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I finished reading Isaacson's biography of Benjamin Franklin over the weekend. (I spent most of Friday sitting in the Whitetail ski lodge transported back to 18th century France where Franklin spent some of the last years of his life.) The book was very interesting and helped dispel some of the myths about Franklin and addressed some of the criticisms that have often been leveled against him. It is a highly readable biography of the first American who truly trusted in the American people to decide who should govern themselves.

I'm now reading - primarily - Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander. It's OK so far but the book is rife with 18th Century Royal Navy cant and jargon that can be difficult for a 21st Century landlubber to understand. To help me navigate through this thicket of lingo, I bought a companion volume to the Aubrey/Maturin series called A Sea of Words. It's basically an oversized glossary. The funny thing is I'm finding this nautical dictionary way more intestesting than the book itself. For every word I look up in A Sea of Words, I'm finding I spend 5 to 10 minutes looking up related words and browsing through words that just happen to fall under my eye. At this rate I'll be reading Master and Commander for years.

I have a similar problem with the real dictionary. My favorite dictionary of all time is The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. I adore this book and it would certainly be one of the books I'd take with me to a desert island. I figure all the other books are already in there. I've never understood how people can think dictionaries are boring. It's not at all uncommon for me to go get my dictionary to look up some word, get sidetracked for 30 or 45 minutes, and then completely forget to look up the word that brought me to the dictionary in the first place.

If I had a spare $900 I'd buy the OED. Now there's a trove.
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