Reading List: April - June 2020

Peter Carlaftes (ed.), Faking of the President. NY: Three Rooms, 2020.

This collection of nineteen short stories is based on a simple premise: history didn’t have to happen as it did. Each entry examines a particular presidential event, usually one that did occur, through a noir lens that shows the devious, absurd, and comic consequences that arise from a small change in our assumptions. From proof that Buchanan was gay to a fight between Tipper and Laura to determine the 2000 election, it is a disturbingly funny look at alternative history.


Megan James, Innsmouth. Richmond, VA: Sink/ Swim, 2016.

This first graphic novel in a series, about an acolyte of Chutulu who is trying to forestall the end times by banishing the siggoth he has been chosen to protect, is a light and cartoony spoof of Lovecraftian lore.


 Homer (trans. Emily Wilson), The Odyssey. NY: W.W. Norton, 2018.

I’m not a scholar, but over the years I have read the tale of brave Ulysses in at least four versions. This is my favorite. I would have said the Fitzgerald before; its strident, striving verse propels the great action-adventure sequences of a mythic hero’s journey in a way Pope’s rhyming couplets simply can’t match, and no other translators have impressed enough to remember their names. But Wilson’s version seems an entirely different story.

Of course it’s the same story. Ulysses angers the gods upon leaving Troy and spends another ten years trying to get home. Most of that time, he is a guest on Circe’s private island. Until now, those of us who don’t read Greek thought he was a prisoner. Come to find out, though, he was Circe’s lover. So much for missing home; Penelope can’t compete with a goddess. Still, he tires of eternity with an ageless beauty and entreats the gods; his patron Athena sees him safely back to Ithaka and vengeance. That’s all the same, but like reporters from rival papers, Wilson focuses on the home aspect while others emphasis the struggle to get there. This is a softer, calmer Odyssey in which Ulysses seems somewhat more self-aware, recognizing his trickiness as less than honorable and lamenting his lost comrades, rather than reveling in gore. It is also an extremely readable blank verse, relying on the Greek affinity for sense descriptors and imagery rather than rhetoric and rhyme for its poetic power. I think it will quickly become the classroom standard in secondary school curricula.


Brian Vaughn and Tony Harris, Ex Machina. La Jolla: Wildstorm, 2008.

This deluxe edition collects the first eleven issues -- two major story arcs -- of a 9/11 story from the former mayor of New York, a superhero thanks to his ability to command machines who rode the fame of unmasking into office.


Walter Mosley, Gone Fishin’. Baltimore: Black Classic, 1997.

The Easy Rawlins origin story, told from an hotel room in Paris as Rawlins returns from World War II, recounts the week he spent with Mouse before his friend’s wedding.


Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God. NY: HarperPerennial, 2006.

This book would be worth reading if only for its description of a woman growing into herself under Jim Crow law and its savage declaration that nigger woman is the mule of the world, but the language, full of idiom and image, like Death as a thing with square toes, rewards attentive reading with delight.


Alexander McCall Smith, Handsome Man’s De Luxe Cafe. NY: Pantheon, 2014.

No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency novels are always fun, both as armchair mysteries (Mma Ramotswe is of traditional stature and hires out the legwork) and as a bright taste of Botswana. This case involves helping an amnesic recover her memories in order to avoid deportation. In it, McCall Smith centers geopolitical, patriarchal, and class issues in the everyday of home life, giving setting and characters life beyond their plot functions, yet making these themes ancillary to more local, more immediate concerns - as experienced by most people. And there’s a car chase, too!


Walter Mosley, Charcoal Joe. NY: Doubleday, 2016.

This episode brings us Easy Rawlins in mid-life, nearly fifty, owner of the only black business in a white building for fifty blocks in any direction of 1968 Los Angeles and one of the most dangerous men in Southern California, trying to clear an innocent man of murder.


Richard Littler, Discovering Scarfolk. London: Ebury Press, 2014.

This speculative volume tries to explain a botched real estate purchase using a notebook and accompanying collection of ephemera from the 1970s UK. Can no longer be certain it is fiction.


Tony Morrison, Home. NY: Knopf, 2012.

With compassion, insight, and deft, near unnoticeable hints at the ending, the Nobel prize winner  illustrates the tangential consequences of horrific, casual violence.



Jacqueline Woodson, Red at the Bone. NY: Riverhead, 2019.

This story, told from the various perspectives of family at Melody’s cotillion, show us Melody and her mother coming to terms with their relationship, their pasts -- including the 1921 Tulsa riots and 9/11 -- and their selves. While it could be consumed in a single sitting, it is worth the time to contemplate and savor.

Reading List, January - March 2020

Harvey Pekar, illustrated by Dean Haspiel, The Quitter. NY: Vertigo, 2005.

Legendary comics writer Pekar delivers an unsparing autobiography that shows his passage through school and menial jobs, development as a jazz critic, and eventual realization that comics could be more than superheroes, which led to his celebrated American Splendor series.


Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country. NY: HarperCollins, 2016.

The Safe Negro Travel Guide allows people of color to move almost freely in 1954 America, but it doesn’t list accommodations in Devon County, Massachusetts. Still, that’s where Marvin Turner has gone, so his son Atticus, brother George, and niece Letitia follow. They discover Marvin in chains, a group of natural philosophers trying to tap primal energies, and a way to escape, but only after several more encounters do they finally, perhaps, defeat the cult’s lone survivor.


Andrew Kaufman, All My Friends Are Superheroes, 2d ed. Toronto: Coach House, 2013.

Tom has a problem: at his wedding reception, an ex hypnotized his new wife. Now Tom is invisible to her, and she thinks he’s run off. She’s waited for months, but is planning a move to Vancouver to start over. Tom has booked the seat next to hers, but now has only until landing to make her realize that he never left. It is a simple, sweet story, complicated by the fact that there are 249 superheroes in Toronto, but Tom isn’t one of them.


Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin. NY: Simon & Schuster, 2003.

The final founding father on my Run-Up to Revolution 2020 reading list, Franklin is also the most generally interesting. Well-known as a printer and publisher, thanks to Poor Richard’s Almanac and his Autobiography, and as a scientist for his work with electricity, Franklin not only served in but also organized the Pennsylvania militia, ran the Post Office, started the first public lending library, and built a university in addition to his lengthy diplomatic career in France and his political service at home. This biography, as easily approachable as the subject was said to be, tries to provide a balanced look at the man, often noting how other scholars have viewed an incident that requires explanation. Similarly, Isaacson ends with a Conclusion section that discusses how Franklin’s reputation has changed over time. This is a solid, if ambitious, choice for high school libraries as well as appropriate for public and academic collections.


Brian Martin, Detroit Wolverines. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2018.

I’ve been hoping to find this book since discovering the Wolverines in a very thin clipping file at the Hall of Fame in 2004, because learning more about Detroit’s short-lived first Major League team, the National League and World Series champions of 1887, otherwise requires extensive primary source research. Martin, as pages of endnotes demonstrate, has done that work, scouring the local and national sporting press of the day as well as drawing on the work of other early baseball scholars such as Peter Morris and David Nemec to tell a story of big-league ambition, competitive success, and commercial failure.


Megan Abbot, Queenpin. NY: Simon & Schuster, 2007.

I was delighted to discover new (to me) noir in the dollar rack, and it was the first book I reached for that night. Then I found the autograph. I didn’t panic, though: this has happened to me before, with sci-fi from a Kiwanis Club sale in Ann Arbor. I just nodded, smiled, and turned the page.

And the the next page, and the next. I did not need a bookmark last night, and Abbott’s first-person tale of an underworld girl’s career already places her alongside Walter Mosley in my esteem. I will be reading more of her soon.


James Ellroy, Killer on the Road (originally Silent Terror). NY: Avon Twilight, 1999.

Martin, a serial killer, is in love with Ross, another serial killer. This makes for an awkward love story, though told as a prison memoir, makes a gripping read nonetheless.


Philip K Dick, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. NY: DAW, 1974

The story is about an entertainer who unknowingly steps into an alternate universe and the policeman who then pins a murder on him. Unlike much sci-fi, though, Dick simply asserts his absurdities, rather than examining them in a theoretical or mechanical way, and uses them to launch psychological exploration. Chapter eleven, on love and grief, is both central to the plot and a moving discussion in its own right, and an example of why Dick is so well-regarded by many in spite of his sometimes incomprehensible plots.


Walter Mosley, All I Did Was Shoot My Man. NY: Riverhead, 2012.

Leonid McGill, boxer and con turned P.I., once framed a woman for stealing $58 million. Now he’s arranged for her release -- but the real thief wants her, and everyone remotely connected to the crime, dead -- proving once again that no good deed goes unpunished.


Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Water Dancer. NY: One World, 2019.

This is Magical Realism, a story of slavery and escape; of family and love; of memory and storytelling. It features Harriet Tubman, and is based in part on the true efforts of William and Peter Still. It is magnificent.


James Agee, A Death in the Family. NY: Avon 1938.

I got this book, a 1964 thirteenth printing of the paperback edition, second hand. It came to me illustrated, with a portrait of Lenny Stockwell inked inside the back cover.

Lenny Stockwell is not part of the story, which follows a Knoxville family through a difficult moment, presenting each perspective with caressing detail and gentle rhythms that leave the reader’s feet chill from standing barefoot in dewy grass. Agee writes beautifully, and that alone is reason to read him.

Reason enough. There is so much more than just the prose, that’s just the easiest part to sell. This book is worth reading. Go as slow as you like. It’s worth the time.

Reading list, October - December 2019

Michael Hague, Book of Dragons. NY: Wm. Morrow & Co, 1995.

This collection, seventeen selected excerpts and retellings of tales about the great winged fire-breathing creatures, is illustrated with both black-and-white drawings and full-color scenes. Ranging from ancient China to twentieth-century England, it shows how dragons, even now, exert a universal attraction.


Christopher Moore, Lamb. NY: Wm. Morrow, 2002.

This gospel, as told by Christ’s childhood friend Biff, shows what the other versions don’t: the years between thirteen and thirty-three. These years are consumed by a search for answers, as Jesus travels east to find the wise men who came to honor his birth. During this time, he learns alchemy and kung fu, and he attains enlightenment. Biff, meanwhile, learns alchemy and kung fu.


Tony Hillerman, The Shape Shifter. NY: Harper, 2006.

In this installment, Lt. Leaphorn is drawn to investigate an old, closed case by a magazine photo. In it, he sees a tale-telling rug that was claimed destroyed, and begins to suspect that a man declared dead many years ago had staged the fire, and was now back to kill any remaining potential witnesses.

Part of what makes Hillerman so enjoyable is the way he incorporates native lore and tradition -- obviously a significant part of a Navajo Tribal Policeman’s life -- into the procedural form. The rest of what makes him enjoyable, though, is how well he constructs and tells the story; Hillerman is reliably entertaining.


Ron Chernow, Washington. NY: Penguin, 2010.

There are only sixty-seven chapters, and each is well under twenty pages. The prose is clean and fluid, reading easily in spite of its well-researched and documented information density. The subject is no less than this country’s first, and greatest, hero. I even can see how this might be a suitable primary textbook for an undergraduate US history class, as it removes the shroud of myth from Washington while placing him firmly in context among great events and the other ‘great men’ of his time.


Paul duCoudray & Elizabeth Haidle, The Pipers. Taos: Mascot, 2019.

Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling.... In this striking watercolor graphic adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story, a psychiatrist is tasked with determining why soldiers are turning into plants. Pastels give way to darker washes and deeper colors as the action unfolds, and it ends with reds shading to black, but this still may qualify as a happy ending.


Peter Dickinson, illustrated by Wayne Anderson, Flight of Dragons. NY: Harper & Row, 1979.

This isn’t a storybook. It is a serious study of how dragons, if they are assumed to have existed, became airborne. By examining the records that do exist, distorted by myth as they are, Dickinson concludes that several common elements -- fiery breath, huge size, and hoarding gold among them -- actually seem to make sense. Dragons would have been like hot air balloons, with great cavities filled by buoyant gasses that produced flame when expelled into the air; their wings, too weak to lift such mass, were mostly for steering. Profusely illustrated, and covering every aspect of dragon life, it is a welcome scientific grounding for an otherwise fantastic creature.


 Rebecca Stowe, Shadow of Desire. NY: Pantheon, 1996.

This is the sort of book I hate most. Over the course of a winter holiday, the narrator returns home to confront her semi-functional family. It is heavily laden with whiny introspection and memory, spilling family secrets, and unwarranted angst. Then her alcoholic mother dies, the narrator realized that she should just get on with enjoying life, and it is mercifully over.


Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell. Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow, 1981.

I dog-ear poems in Bukowski, scarring the beautifully crafted heavy paper in a way I do not damage other poets or lesser examples of bookmaking. It seems appropriate: these poems are raw expressions, urgent and forceful, loaded with pain and drinking and sex and loneliness and not at all what high school English teachers usually show us as poetry. This book is full of memorable images and phrases, too many to remember, and I am certain Bukowski would rather we bend a page’s corner than treat his words as holy relics.


Alvin Schwartz, Whoppers. NY: Harper Trophy, 1990.

This (well-sourced and noted) collection of tall tales from American folklore is suitable and, in this case, repackaged for an elementary audience. Occasional attempts at accent or dialect in the retellings can feel forced, but generally just good fun.


Peter Morris, Level Playing Fields. Lincoln: Nebraska, 2007.

A look at the early days of professional baseball, from the groundskeeper’s perspective, one of the sport’s premier historians follows the Murphy brothers as they grow from immigrant ditch-diggers to overseeing the finest fields in Major Leagues. It refocuses attention on those responsible for the dirt on a hustling player’s uniform, shows a new side of famous managers like John McGraw and Connie Mack, and keeps the story short enough to hold attention well. It would not be out of place in an undergraduate history course.


Aminder Dhaliwal, Woman World. NY: Drawn & Quarterly, 2018.

A post-apocalyptic graphic novel in pastels that show a world where men haven’t been born in a generation - and that we might all prefer to live there. Warning: the mayor believes in transparency, so there is child-like cartoon nudity on almost every page. It is utterly inoffensive.

apologies

 My draft folder of blog entries shows that I owe you over a year's worth of books: July - September 2019 seems several ages age. I am sorry for the delay in posting. Rest assured, it is not because I stopped reading during the year that time stopped.

Rather, I got tired of watching Amazon absorb the retail ecosystem. I got tired of seeing Prime trucks on the freeway, on my street, instead of Postal carriers. I got tired of hearing how much richer Bezos became during lockdown, and I wanted another way to offer you the books I recommend.

Bookshop.org offers that alternative. Their searchable web interface lets us support local shops, rather than an enterprise dedicated to putting such spots out of business, by distributing 75% of the profits to independent bookstores. I hope you agree it is a better way.

Please note that Bookshop.org dose offer an affiliate program. I am now part of this program and earn a commission of sales thru my website. In the meantime, I have not removed the Amazon search box from the site because I can no longer access source code to alter the page. Should you make a purchase using this search, I no longer receive a commission.