BOOKS THREAD

I read Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief for a curriculum review and wasn't impressed, although I understand why kids like it. Now, I'm reading a few for my own enjoyment Three Sheets by Zane something from the Travel Channel (loaded with info on alcohol and alcoholic pursuits) and Angels and Demons by Dan Brown (fast-paced from what I've seen so far).

Looking to cruise through a few more before summer is over. Anybody read anything interesting lately?

 

I know he's been mentioned before on this thread, but I just recently started reading Robert Crais, and am plowing through his works left and right. Finshed Lullaby Town in less than a day, and then plowed through Voodoo River (though other commitments meant it took 3 days to finish that bad boy). I'm working on The Forgotten Man now and have The Watchman and The Two Minute Rule waiting in the wings. I'm positively giddy.
Before Crais, my kick was Tim Dorsey. Loved me some Serge. Crais was my "break" from Dorsey, though I think I'll go back to him soon.

 

I thought I was the only person who hated "Fortress of Solitude". I came of age in Brooklyn at the same time (albeit a different part), but the book never came close to clicking.

 

His last Pike book was "The First Rule," Moddy, and I agree. It's terrific.

Crais really has gotten better, and that's kind of a rare thing for a successful author. There are plenty who start cranking out mediocre work as soon as they've made it (*cough*Robert Parker*cough). I think even Michael Connelly has phoned in a few, but he's still damn good.

One other I can think of with a real growth from novel to novel is Don Winslow (the crime writer, not the "erotica" writer). Someone highly recommended his first novel and it really didn't do much for me. It was a series character -- Neal something. Once he ditched the character and started writing stand alone novels he became one of my favorites. Great stuff.

 

I started, I believe, somewhere in the middle of his works. The first book I read was LA Requiem and the second was Demolition Angel. Both were good enough for me to try to head back towards the beginning and move forward (though right now I'm sticking to the books available at my library). I'm definitely enjoying this as summer reading.

Neat story about the e-mail, by the way. Really cool.

 

I feel like Lethem is one of those writers who everyone agrees is very talented, but he's never actually written a great book. And because he's so talented, people pretend his "meh" books are works of brilliance. If you compare his work with the people he's most often grouped with because of age and aspirations -- Johnathan Franzen, Junot Diaz, Michael Chabon, George Saunders, Jhumpa Lahiri, Zadie Smith, Dave Eggers -- I feel like he falls well short of all of them.

But some people go bonkers over his stuff. Never quite made sense to me.

 

So far in 2010:
Meat Market by Bruce Feldman
Secretariat: The Making of a Champion (renamed from Big Red of Meadow Stable) By William Nack
The Best American Sports Writing 2009
Going Deep: 20 Classic Sports Stories By Gary Smith
Munson — The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain By Marty Appel
Odd Man Out By Matt McCarthy
The Glory of Their Times by Lawrence S. Ritter

About to start: The Yankee Years by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci

 

For some reason, I grabbed Sarah Vowell's "Leave the Cannoli" off the shelf this morning. Even better than the first time through.

 

Just finished last week Douglas Coupland's bio of Marshall McLuhan, one of the great minds of the last fifty years. Coupland can be an annoying self-indulgent writer at times but he certainly captured the rock star status of McLuhan in the sixties.

Also, read Anthony Bourdain's newest, "Medium Raw" where he goes after unethical food critics, phony chefs and the fall of the Food Network. And in Bourdain style, goes after them with a meat cleaver. He also talks about how his ;ife completely changed with the runaway success of "Kitchen Confidential" which launched his TV career and made him a very rich man. I don't know the sales of Kitchen but I'm sure it must have been in the high six figures

 

I've plowed through 4 books in the last couple of months:
The Room And The Chair: Meh.
Game Change: Outstanding. Great reporting, learned a lot, interesting read.
War: Highly recommend this. Junger is one ballsy dude; he lived and patrolled right alongside the soldiers he wrote about. It's first-hand reporting that's damn courageous. The Bad Guys didn't give a damn if they shot a journalist but he put himself in harm's way and that produced a riveting book.
The Last Stand: Custer and Sitting Bull. Wasn't sure I'd be interested but the research is amazing and Nathaniel Philbrick does a great job of telling the story from both sides. Don't be put off by its length if you pick it up; about the last third of the pages are annotations, notes and references. Hard to imagine the level of work that went into researching and organizing this book.