What Should Kester Read?

What Should Kester Read?

• Black Hole by Charles Burns
• The Escapists by Brian K. Vaughan
• Look Homeward Angel by Thomas Wolfe
• Men and Cartoons by Jonathan Lethem
• Positively 5th Street by James McManus

What else is Kester reading?

• The Daily Bible: NIV Version (daily devotional)
• Just Kids by Patti Smith (New & Noteworthy book club)
• Walden by Henry David Thoreau (Required Reading Revisited book club)

4-26-12

What's Kester reading?

• Bad Religion by Ross Douthat
• Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
• The Daily Bible: NIV Version (daily devotional)
• Walden by Ralph Waldo Emerson (Required Reading Revisited book club)
• Welcome To Utopia by Karen Valby (New & Noteworthy book club)

4-19-12

What's Kester reading?

• Bad Religion by Ross Douthat
• Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
• The Daily Bible: NIV Version (daily devotional)
• The Meadow by James Galvin
• Prayers by Peter Washington (daily devotional)
• The Riot At Bucksnort by Robert E. Howard
• Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon
• Walden by Ralph Waldo Emerson (Required Reading Revisited book club)
• Welcome To Utopia by Karen Valby (New & Noteworthy book club)

4-17-12

What's Kester reading?

• Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander by Thomas Merton
• Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
• The Daily Bible: NIV Version (daily devotional)
• The Meadow by James Galvin
• Prayers by Peter Washington (daily devotional)
• Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon
• Tinkers by Paul Harding
• Walden by Ralph Waldo Emerson (Required Reading Revisited book club)
• Welcome To Utopia by Karen Valby (New & Noteworthy book club)

4-15-12

What's Kester reading?

• Absence of Mind by Marilynne Robinson
• Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander by Thomas Merton
• Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
• The Daily Bible: NIV Version (daily devotional)
• Prayers by Peter Washington (daily devotional)
• Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon
• Walden by Ralph Waldo Emerson (Required Reading Revisited book club)
• Welcome To Utopia by Karen Valby (New & Noteworthy book club)

A Strong West Wind

    The first selection reviewed for this month's What Should Kester Read? was Alison Bechdel's Fun Home; a daughter's non-fiction account of her and her father and the relationship between them. It was a sad story, but dispassionately told, and it left me cold. It seemed to me a story that demanded great care, told by a woman who didn't care much at all, except for the aesthetics of things, resulting in a story that was beautifully crafted, but bitter and brittle and cruel.
    The final selection reviewed for this month's What Should Kester Read? is Gail Caldwell's A Strong West Wind; a daughter's non-fiction account of her and her father and the relationship between them. And while it is certainly not a sentimental or sappy story, it is told with a warmth and heart that Bechdel sorely lacked. The "strong west wind" of the title works on multiple levels; Caldwell was born and raised in Amarillo, TX and west Texas is known for its winds, but Caldwell's story is about more than west Texas, it is a story of sound and fury, of family and faith, and of the challenges that come inevitably with change. Caldwell crafts a sentence like a woodworker or sculptor, her efforts come off looking effortless; a memoir both moving and magical. Whether writing about her own past or that of her father, she is unflinchingly candid and unfailingly, often heartbreakingly, real. And yet, the result never has the feel of dispassionate expose, instead it feels true. And that's because it is true; true in the way that something is "good and true;" true in the way that an arrow is true, piercingly so. Humble and sincere, honest about her own faults and foibles as much as anyone's, wry and wise in her assessments of herself, but never taking the lazy route of false modesty. This is a story about growing up and moving on and lessons learned along the way, and one sentence from her prologue was all I needed to get hooked; "Like a million cowards and trailblazers before me, I had mistaken being gone for being free." Caldwell never tries to say which of these she is, she simply shares her story and allows her reader to decide. Which, in a day and age when too many memoirists imbue their stories with more drama than is warranted, feels like the work of a trailblazer to me.

4-11-12

What Should Kester Read? selections

• A Strong West Wind by Gail Caldwell

What else is Kester reading? 

• Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander by Thomas Merton
• Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
• The Daily Bible: NIV Version (daily devotional)
• Prayers by Peter Washington (daily devotional)

Super Sad True Love Story

    Super Sad True Love Story takes place in a dystopian New York of the not so distant future; far enough away as to still feel like the future, while close enough to seem eerily like what's coming next. A world filled with folks who don't know how to connect outside of online and don't know their worth apart from the attention of others. So that's super sad. But also super funny and super affecting. The true love story is one shared by Lenny and Eunice; the two characters taking turns telling their tale in every other chapter. Gary Shteyngart does a brilliant job of making the voices unique and believable, particularly when you consider that one is a young twentysomething Korean girl and the other is a Russian male pushing 40. This is Brave New World with more story and less sermonizing. It's got a lot of humor and a lot of heart. If, at first, it feels a little like a gimmick, keep reading. The further in you go, the better the story gets. In the end, it lives up to the best of what each word in its title implies; it's political and prophetic and wry and wise. It is a super sad true love story. And that is one of my favorite kinds.

4-7-12

What Should Kester Read? selections

• A Strong West Wind by Gail Caldwell
• Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

What else is Kester reading? 

• Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander by Thomas Merton
• Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
• The Daily Bible: NIV version (daily devotional)
• Prayers by Peter Washington/editor (daily devotional)

4-5-12

What Should Kester Read? selections

• A Strong West Wind by Gail Caldwell
• Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

What else is Kester reading? 

• Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway
• The Daily Bible: NIV version (daily devotional)
• Living Into Focus by Arthur Boers (Lenten reading)
• Prayers by Peter Washington/editor (daily devotional)

Oblivion

Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention. -Simone Weil

    David Foster Wallace was a man concerned with paying attention. His now famous speech at Kenyon College (collected in a book titled This Is Water) is all about paying attention to what is going on around us. His most well-known work, Infinite Jest, is filled with characters struggling to be more attentive to what matters and less obsessed with what does not. And his collection of short stories, Oblivion (from this month's What Should Kester Read?), is one tale after the other about the things that are happening on the periphery of our lives, the people that we're missing, and our failure to listen and be listened to. It's the ad man trying to keep the attention of a focus group while himself failing to see the "free climber" just outside the window. It's the substitute teacher having a nervous breakdown while the student narrator daydreams and the police panic. It's the screams of a baby, heard but not properly attended to. These are stories of how difficult it is to give our undivided attention to the people and situations that need them most. It's the saddest and most somber of any of Wallace's writing; his essays are funnier, his novels more hopeful, his speech is both and more. Like darker parables, one could argue that these stories are too depressing to be helpful and miss the fact that they are warnings, and that their hope is found in the fact that we still have a chance to heed them. We can still make the choice to change. We can still take the time to listen. We can still make the effort to attend.

St. George's and The Intuitionist

    Celebrated in Catalonia with the giving of a rose and a book; St. George's Day has caught on in other parts of the world as the International Day of the Book. As you can imagine, a reader and bookseller like myself gets excited about this sort of holiday. The same can be said for BookPeople, the store where I work.
    Every April we put up a display of staff favorites that, for whatever reason, haven't been big sellers in the past year. This year, I was surprised to discover that Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist was one of those books.
    Whitehead is an excellent writer and his debut is among my favorite works of fiction written this century. Set in the curious world of elevator operators and a universe parallel to our own, The Intuitionist is a brilliant bending of genre, a subtly spooky neo-noir. It's moody and mysterious, but also philosophical and political; think Jonathan Lethem meets Ralph Ellison.
    St. George's Day is April 23rd. Drop by BookPeople (or your local independent bookstore) and pick up a book for a friend or loved one (or stranger, for that matter). And, if I may make a recommendation, have that book be Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist.

4-1-12

What Should Kester Read? selections

• Oblivion by David Foster Wallace
• A Strong West Wind by Gail Caldwell
• Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

What else is Kester reading? 

• Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway
• The Daily Bible: NIV version (daily devotional)
• Dare Me by Megan Abbott
• Living Into Focus by Arthur Boers (Lenten reading)
• Prayers by Peter Washington/editor (daily devotional)

Fun Home and Nazi Literature In The Americas

    Well, we're one day in and I have already read two of this month's five assigned reads. No, that is not an April Fool's joke. Yes, I did start reading on the 30th of March.
    I went into both books with certain expectations. Alison Bechdel's Fun Home is a graphic novel memoir that I expected to love, based upon my friends, co-workers, and customers that have talked (sometimes gushed) about what a sublime and moving story it is. Roberto Bolano's Nazi Literature is a fictional collection of brief biographies on a vast array of authors who were Nazis or Nazi sympathizers. I expected to hate this book, based on the fact that I have not enjoyed Bolano, in the past.
    I was wrong on both counts; surprisingly disappointed on the one hand and surprisingly enchanted on the other.
    Fun Home first. I should begin by saying that the book is artfully done, both the drawings themselves and the way that the story is laid out. Were this a collection of pictures, I would be very taken with them. It's the story itself that I have problems with, and a good story is the main reason that I read stories. Bechdel's left me cold. It's possible that is what she intended to do; if so, kudos Bechdel. Still didn't care for it. Bechdel treats her family, particularly her father, like a literary device and so a truly heartbreaking tale ends up lacking heart and pathos. I didn't feel anything for any of these characters and I sensed that Bechdel doesn't either. Her father's tragic death looks to be a tragic accident and yet she insists that it was not only a suicide, but one likely caused by her own "coming out." Both scenarios struck me as unlikely, particularly the first. She provides the flimsiest of evidence for her theory and then shapes a narrative around it. It struck me as a way of shaping the narrative around herself, even when she wasn't necessarily the center of the story and, in the end, felt like a story of a self-centered father told by his self-centered daughter. I recently saw Bechdel interviewed and, when asked what her next project was, answered, "I'm working on another memoir, because I've decided that the only thing I'm interested in is myself." After reading this story, I believe it. I didn't care about her story or her father's, which is sad, because it's the telling, and not the story, that was the cause. Alas, we move on to Nazi Literature.
    Having read Bolano's Savage Detectives and attempted 2666, I knew that Bolano was capable of real genius, but that these genius moments were too often buried under hundreds of pages of boring and confused; both books meander around to no real purpose and with no set destination. Nazi Literature is completely different. Perhaps it's the format itself that helps it along; this collection is incisive and concise. It's also hilarious in its subtle satire. The Nazis would have hated this book, if they even got it. I didn't always get it, but I loved it. Proof that Bolano should stick to novellas and short story collections. My next search will be to see if he has put out either.
    An up and down to kick off April. More coming soon.