Go Banana!

now finished: Lizard by Banana Yashimoto

(this blog post backdated to the day I finished the book)

 

I've had Banana Yashimoto on my radar since I first ever started working at Borders that holiday season long ago. I mean, one doesn't easily forget a (pen) name like "Banana." But, I never got around to buying or checking out anything or even for several years figuring out if the author was male or female. Turns out, female. Someone brought a book of short stories, Lizard, to an Andong book swap this summer, and I took it home mostly out of "Why not?" curiosity. 

 

File under: not bad. It was a fast read, and some of the stories were better than others. Bonus: the stories got better as the book went along, so stick it out through the first two or three. All of the tales seemed to be about alienated or searching people wandering (and riding trains) through their days, and all were about relationships and self in some way. I would read another Banana. 

 

It also helps, maybe, that this year I have fallen in love with Japan. I was set to be even more appreciative of people hurtling on a subway through the Tokyo night to their suburban enclaves. I was totally tapped in to the mix of emotion, history, practicality, modernity, efficiency, and beauty that infuses everything there. 

I've read a lot of comments that her novels are even better than her stories, so I will check one out. Someday.

 

 

 

Who Needs the Help?A Bestseller Backlash Case Study

now finished: The Help by Kathryn Stockett

(this blog post backdated to the day I finished the book)

The very concept of bestseller backlash was made for books like The Help. I discovered bestseller backlash in early 2000 when I was at the beginning of my approximately six-year Borders career. People flock to certain books in a very "nothing-attracts-a-crowd-like-a-crowd" way (thanks, Soul Asylum). And those books are rarely worth the hype. To be clear, a book does not fall into the category of bestseller backlash just because it is a bestseller. There's a certain intangible quality to these books, a certain skepticism about their place on the bestseller list, a certain lack of need to read them felt by me and other Readers, as opposed to the breathless "you-have-to-read-this" masses. Sometimes the bestseller backlash is a mistake and the book is good or even great (The Life of Pi, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, The Dogs of Babel, Freakonomics) and sometimes the book is terrible (The Memory Keeper's Daughter, Who Moved My Cheese?) but most often the book is incredibly average and, much like Top 40 pop music, the throngs of devoted fans are blind to its mediocrity (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo/Men Who Hate Women, Water for Elephants, etc. etc. etc....and, notably, The Help).

The Help has the added bestseller backlash "advantage" of being not just ridiculously popular but also being thought to be important. Social issues, race, the South, the Civil Rights Era, change we can believe in (oops, wrong decade) you can just feel the self-pronounced importance oozing from the reaction to this book. However, it has actually generated some actual backlash (in the world at large) for telling the African-American stories from a very white, very limited point of view. I myself wrote about feminism in The Help because the feminist issues are there, even when the author seems to be oblivious to them, despite having written this "important" novel. And if there is one thing I hate ("one thing?!" - Clue), it is people/institutions that miss their own point. (See also: most of religion.) I have thoroughly enjoyed this blog, which explains a lot of what is wrong with The Help.

The Help straight up gets some things wrong. For example, when people started becoming long-hair hippies. That was one of the first things to rub me the wrong way, when she had a character in Mississippi in 1963 refer to a long-hair Yankee throwing a peace sign. "No way," I thought. That is way too early! In her afterword, which the abovementioned blog calls her Too Little Too Late section, she casually states, "I took liberty with time, like using Bob Dylan's 'The Times They Are A-Changin' even though it didn't come out until a year or two later." Um - why? You specifically set this novel to swirl around the events of 1962-1963, like Medgar Evers, JFK, MLK, etc. And then you decide to go ahead and switch up history - because - why, again? You're just too good for it? You can't think of a song that was out in 1963? You don't really remember this world you are so haughtily evoking, as you want us all to believe you do?

There were other mistakes/willful errors.  And they weren't the only annoying thing about this book. One annoying thing is the condescension inherent in writing this story the way she chose to do. Another is that no one who lives on the colored side of town seems particularly empowered, ever. They just do good things and get patted on the head by the occasional liberal white person. I think Ms. Stockett was trying to do something awesome here, but it turns out to be another bestseller that ought to be anything but.

As I read, I wanted to know what would happen; I am not going to write a spoiler review because I am more concerned with telling you to PLEASE DON'T BUY this book. Borrow it from a friend or the library or whatever, but please do not throw any more money to this book/author/publisher/entity. 

I want someone to write this novel better. I am fairly certain the author did not at ALL learn the lessons she is apparently trying to teach the rest of us.

Long Time No Nick

now finished: A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby

Nick! I missed you, Nick!  Nick Hornby is one of those authors whose words I love so much that I actually don't devour all their books immediately, but instead I move slowly through their oeuvre, savoring it, so that I never run out of books by them to read. Who are "those" other authors, you ask?  Well, at the moment I would say Nelson DeMille and Virginia Woolf and Nick are my solid trinity in that category. It is a lot easier for me to do with those boys, who are alive, of course, and still writing, as opposed to my girl V.W. who is sadly not going to provide us with any more of her writing. I'm going to finish her oeuvre someday soon, plain and simple.

I see echoes of Virginia Woolf in Nick Hornby. That's right, I said it. Not in word choice or style, exactly. And no, not because of the suicide theme. (Although...)  It's more of a sensibility that understands and communicates the life of a Londoner so well, complete with all those inner thoughts, while interacting with people in the world, yet being pensive and kind of removed from others, but not brooding in alienation (a la Salinger). There's something connecting those two. I would love to imagine a meeting between Nick Hornby and Virginia Woolf.

Anyway, A Long Way Down. It has been a few years since I Fever Pitched, but there I was at book swap and someone had brought A Long Way Down  to trade and for me the chance at a free copy of a Nick Hornby I haven't read is a no-brainer. Let me just say that I adored it! It might even be my favorite of his. The perfect lines, the way he nails each character personality as they spew out their pithy takes on the world.

The morbid premise is that four strangers meet on top of a tall London building (I think I should know what building it is he alludes to, but didn't) on New Year's Eve because they are all planning to jump but instead, because they are all there, they don't jump, and the book chronicles what happens to the four of them next. It's a sheer joy to read, while also being full of sarcasm, thoughtfulness, and some true life pondering as well as hope. What more could you ask from a novel? I daresay Voltaire would be impressed.

I'm trying to get Brian to read it. One of these days, he is going to read the Nick. He already means to read Fever Pitch, and I am sure he will read High Fidelity because he appreciates the genius of the movie, so soon, soon he will know the brilliance that is Nick Hornby. Virginia Woolf is a harder sell. (But she shouldn't be!)

Long Gone

now finished: Long Gone by Alafair Burke

I read this book on my computer, using Kindle for PC. I'm in Korea, and I have yet to find any Alafair Burke books in the bookstores here, and I wouldn't have been able to order a copy in time for her online Long Gone-reading club, and she/her publisher had already hooked me and got me to download Kindle for PC in the first place with the $1.99 electronic Angel's Tip (one of her previous books) a few weeks ago, just like (as Alafair says) a drug dealer hooks the kiddies by passing out samples at the playground.

My point - oh yes, a point - is that this book was on my laptop, and my battery doesn't last too long. Which means I pretty much never unplug my laptop and roam around the house with it to, say, the bed or couch. It stays on my desk. Which means the desk office chair, my work space, not curled up all comfy-like. And yet! I sat there for hours, up past my bedtime, reading Long Gone so I could find out what happens. My point, therefore, is that it hooks ya, the Long Gone, and you keep reading.

I like Alafair Burke's writing style but I also like knowing her personality a bit and seeing it come out in her novel. I am still not a big mystery/thriller person and I sometimes feel like I am the wrong person to judge mystery/thrillers, but then I think that's stupid because why can't we all comment on any "type" of book, but then I remember people who have a preconceived bias against girls-with-guitars talking shite about Indigo Girls and I don't want to be those people and...and....oh, me and my genre fiction woes.

Will you like Long Gone? Probably. It's very New Yorky, but not in a way that's been done to death. If anything it's kind of Sandra Scoppettone New Yorky. (See! I read other mysteries! Sometimes. Every five years or so.) It has lots of different characters who start connecting together. It has people using modern technology for nefarious reasons. It's a good beach read, or a sit-at-your-desk-past-midnight read. It has a thirtysomething heroine. It has snark. Alafair Burke is good with the lovable snark.

And I didn't even have to spot any issues this time...

In which I am blessed to receive The Giver

now finished: The Giver by Lois Lowry

I am no longer the only person in my social circles/tax bracket who has not read The Giver. See, this is what happens when you are a thirtysomething who has spent an awful lot of time a)with twentysomethings b)working in bookstores. You realize that there is some book that slipped into the young adult repertoire while you were in college leaving behind childish things, a book that became a modern classic while you were diving into Plath, Sartre, and the like.

For me, that book is The Giver. When I hear Lois Lowry, I think "Of course! My girl Anastasia Krupnik!" Alas, Anastasia has apparently been usurped by dystopian Jonas as Lowry's most famous contribution to literature. Goodreads tells me that the book was first published in March 1993. Yup, I was sitting in a freshman dorm room. Even Brian read The Giver in school. He's only a few years younger than me, but clearly during those few years The Giver did its thing. I'm pretty sure I never saw a summer reading list during my Borders career that didn't include either The Giver, The Things They Carried (I haven't read that either), or both of those books. Even my sister read it a few years ago! She basically stopped reading when she started reproducing, but one day at her husband's school, with the kids being babysat somewhere, she had down time in his office while waiting to accompany one of his choirs, and she picked it up and read it in an afternoon. I don't think there has ever been a book that Brian, my sister, and droves of teenage Borders customers from three different U.S. states have all read that I have not read. Seriously.

Therefore, when I happened upon a copy here at our monthly Andong book swap, of course I snatched it up, knowing I could quickly read it, get it checked off the list, and even give it to one of my middle or high school students at Avalon and not have to have it take up shelf/suitcase space. I read it in two days, of course. And now, what you've all been waiting for, surely: what did I think about it?

Well, it was fine. I know, not terribly enthusiastic, am I? I'm not trying to be anti-YA or anti-dystopia, but I'm not quite going to salivate endlessly about this one. However, I did like it. One thing I really like about it is that there is a lot more going on than meets the eye. I can absolutely see what it has become the perennial middle/high school book. I could probably talk about the themes and characters and plot revelations for days just by myself, let alone with a class and a teacher.

I think three main strengths of this book are:

• A bold, philosophical idea: that society would envision a "perfect" world as one without emotions and choices, and what this says about the necessity of evil.
• The slow revelation of the full import of this philosophical idea. For example, you kind of enjoy the first family dinner talking about whether anyone had a feeling that day, or when they report their dreams. But then later you realize it's totally creepy why they're doing it.
  
• The steady pacing.
  

Some have criticized the book for being heavy-handed or propaganda-like. I don't see it. I didn't think it was perfect, but I thought it was interesting and it pulls you along smoothly enough, despite some rough patches when you realize what's happening to people who are "released." I for one would have preferred a clearer ending, because I think every author wants to have the "Oooooh, did (s)he or didn't (s)he?" ending, but not every author earns it.

Anastasia! Are you reading this? I want to know what Anastasia Krupnik has to say about Jonas.

Franklin Pierce

now finished:
Franklin Pierce: New Hampshire's Favorite Son by Peter Wallner
Franklin Pierce: Martyr for the Union by Peter Wallner

It's interesting to consider what is meant by "martyr for the union." I mean, I personally think it is awesome to be "New Hampshire's favorite son" too, but I can see where many regular U.S.A. folk don't necessarily get all jolly and fascinated about states as I do, so for this paragraph we'll stick to what it means to be a martyr for the union. I can imagine a chorus of talking heads using those phrases in praise of someone who gave his all for the United States. But you know what it really meant, in 1852, 1853, 1854, 1855, and 1856? It meant continuing to prevent the abolitionists from getting very far in abolishing slavery. I say this not as a particular indictment of Franklin Pierce. He was actually a man of integrity who honored his father, tried to rid the government of corruption and steadfastly refused to do things he didn't think the president had Constitutional power to do.

Also, he was not alone. My boy Millard Fillmore before him was also a man who is much overlooked by history, probably partly because he kept the status quo - i.e., the union. The union of slave states and free states who were sliding farther and farther apart, threatening this amazing thing the founding fathers had recently created. And there were others, many others, who might wring their hands and weep and wail and gnash teeth, but really just let slavery keep on keeping on, as it were.

Why? Well, let me tell you this: these two Peter Wallner volumes about Franklin Pierce make it quite clear how very extreme the abolitionists were. I feel like these days in the U.S. we tell ourselves, subconsciously but also through all our institutions and prevailing narratives of society, that the abolitionists and Abraham Lincoln were the Good Guys and the slaveholders and Jefferson Davis and anyone who wanted to not emancipate slaves were the Bad Guys, and there was a clear dichotomy, and it was simple. And to be honest, that was not the case. Abolitionists were largely reviled and shunned, even though we later call them "right."

Abolitionists were the Michael Moore of their day.

They dared to speak truth to power, and even their churches disliked it. The president had no use for them. The state political parties were infuriated that these believers who wanted such a fundamental transformation would threaten the stability of the union, political harmony, etc. Furthermore, it was not actually easy to be the president and just "do something" about slavery. The president was also president of the southern states. The Kansas-Nebraska act and all that followed in "bleeding Kansas" pretty much destroyed Franklin Pierce's political career. Jefferson Davis was his Secretary of War. (I'm glad we don't have that job title anymore - I wish we also didn't have that job.)

Here I must interject. Jefferson Davis was actually smart and kind of awesome. Sure, sure, a few years later he would preside over the less awesome (and less smart?) Confederacy. But during the 1850s he was successful and he cared about the United States and he did some really cool shit, like import CAMELS! real camels! into Texas and the Southwest, newly acquired U.S. land, for transporting military supplies and the like. He sent some armed forces minions to observe the Prussian War and all that went along with it, and they returned talking about camels in the Middle East, and one thing led to another and - so awesome. I really, really want to find out what happened to the descendants of these camels in Texas when the nasty Civil War interrupted and took everyone's attention away from the Southwest camel program.

But seriously, that interjection is also partly my point. Jefferson Davis was not a monster or devil. He wasn't even a Hitler. He was part of the United States. And there were millions and millions of citizens - churchgoers, politicians, family men, family women, business leaders, frontier renegades, and so forth - all of whom were equally convinced that the southern slave holding states' peculiar institution was not something the Constitutional federal government could do thing one about.

And, most of you today would have been willing to go along with that majority, keeping the peace, not shaking things up too much. I know, because I see the way you react to Michael Moore, and truthout, and Noam Chomsky (who might be one of our smartest living humans), and to those of us who speak out against the evil, awful warmongering of the U.S.

Finally, Franklin Pierce was awesome because he went to college in Maine with Nathaniel Hawthorne and then they were BFFs for life. That job in the customs house? Thanks, pal in the federal government. Ditto for the stint in London. Nathaniel even came to Franklin's house to die instead of setting up his deathbed back home with his wife.

I love my presidential-bios-to-see-where-we-went-wrong project.

The Aquariums of Pyongyang

now finished: The Aquariums of Pyongyang by Kang Chol-Hwan

Often the titles of my blog posts aim to be descriptive and whimsically clever (like this, or this, or this, or how about this one), but that seems unnecessary if not plain wrong for an entry about The Aquariums of Pyongyang. I mean, it already has its own intriguing title. And it's about the least playful book you're likely to come across, until the next horrifying tale of the North Korean gulag you read.

I've had The Aquariums of Pyongyang on my to-read list for several years, ever since the first time I was preparing to teach English in Korea. Back then, in 2005, I was working at Cambridge Borders (one of the few Borders stores still open in 2011, as far as I can tell from across the ocean) and I would stealthily peruse the novels by Korean authors and the Korean history section while I shelved, floor managed, avoided the manager who was hell bent on my professional and personal destruction, and so on. I had to do it stealthily because I for quite some time did not inform my boss and co-workers that I was plotting to go teach English in Korea and leave them far behind. Of course, it never took long to peruse a Borders' Korean history section because there are, like, five books in it. But one of those tended to be The Aquariums of Pyongyang.

When I lived in Daegu 2005-2006 I met a few English teachers who had read it, but I never got around to doing so. Of course, I was all about reading War and Peace during my first Korea tour of duty, which is what gave birth to this Literary Supplement blog (then called my War and Peace blog, hence the URL) so I actually bought shockingly few new books during that period of my life even though I made at least weekly trips to Kyobo bookstore in Daegu's Junangno district, where I browsed and wrote and sipped coffee and accidentally decided to go to Hofstra for law school. Then, once back in the U.S., other things happened to me and The Aquariums... continued over the years to fall through the cracks between my A-to-Z literary blog project, Infinite Jest, and all that crap my law professors were always encouraging me to read. *smirk*

So anyway, this month I had new motivation to read it because the Books and Booze meetup group in Seoul chose The Aquariums of Pyongyang for the monthly book discussion selection, and I am glad I finally got around to it. News flash: life in North Korea is singularly awful. While that is not even remotely surprising, it becomes more and more infuriating and heartbreaking as you actually spend a few hours a day delving into the details of it.

I suppose it is a bit of a self-selected group that even picks up The Aquariums of Pyongyang in the first place, but it's interesting to note that it has NO one-star reviews on Goodreads. I don't think the book is a literary masterpiece, but I do think that it is a well told story, so you aren't just reading it because you're shocked and wowed and sad and angry and mortified and fired up and depressed and worldly and all that jazz.

After growing up in a North Korean prison camp, where he performed hard labor, watched people die, nearly starved, ate rats, was beaten, lived through diseases, and suffered in myriad other ways, the author ended up defecting and making his way through China to South Korea. This means his family and maybe even some other close associates left behind could have been re-imprisoned or even killed because he left. We don't know. And WHY don't we know?

Because we -- and by that I mean 190+ countries on this planet -- sit around doing nothing and let North Korea go on being a secretive, nasty regime about which it is hard to get accurate information.

Why don't we go inside? We (and by this we I mean the U.S. and some other countries) refuse to have diplomatic relations and an embassy, but we are willing to station 35,000 troops in South Korea and operate a De-Militarized Zone, complete with DMZ tours, for decades. What a waste. A waste of resources, talent, money, time and millions of North Korean human lives.

Why don't we just lay down our weapons and pick up flowers and baskets of food and march across the border? Why don't we just say, listen Kim Jong-Il, we're coming in. We come in peace. Hi. Here we are. Hey everyone, have some food. Let's all sit down and talk and stop with the bullshit posturing and making up stories and labeling each other the axis of evil and whatnot.

As far as I can tell, there are two main reasons we don't do that:

1. We are afraid of China.
2. We are full of shit.

The first one is just so dumb. (It's also very much related to the second reason.) The U.S. cannot get it through its thick head that the world would be a better, happier, more productive, more peaceful place if we would let go of the notion that we need enemies in order to demonstrate our greatness. So instead we demonize China, but meanwhile we make truly evil corporations like Wal-Mart rich by having them produce everything there, and then we get mad at China for not wanting to just drop its relationship with North Korea and come crawling into our lap full of trusting, boot-licking tendencies. God, we suck. Fidel Castro is so right about what jerks the Yanquis are when it comes to anyone daring to stand up to the big bully on the foreign policy block. Ugh.

Secondly, as my book group cohorts kept reminding me, we couldn't possibly just show up at a country's border and spill over the river in a giant, flower-toting, hippie-shaking, peaceful entrance of nurses, engineers, teachers, artists and whoever else wanted to come in peace, en masse, insisting that said country immediately begin an internationally recorded and watched dialogue exposing its inner workings, because that would be a violation of North Korea's national sovereignty.

Isn't that rich? We are willing to march violently into anywhere that threatens our way of life has oil but we are not willing to peacefully march into a country where people are suffering and dying in large part because the world is kept in the dark about the suffering and dying. And then people actually have the audacity to say that the U.S. military does humanitarian military interventions. Really? I'm sure all the young men who have been murdered (yes, murdered) in prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq by U.S. forces, along with the Rwandan genocide witnesses, would love to chit chat with you allllllll about the humanitarian interventions of the illustrious U.S. military. Show me the oil might as well be emblazoned across those patches that say 867th airborne artillery blah-blah whatever those patches say.

Yes, I recommend that you read The Aquariums of Pyongyang by Kang Chol-Hwan. I then recommend that we do something about it.

I go out walkin' through the miracles

now finished: Korea: A Walk Through the Land of Miracles by Simon Winchester

I finished the book May 10 but am just getting around to blogging about it. Ugh, me and my bloggage this time around in Korea!! What is going on with me? Well, that's another story for another day. Here, let's ponder Simon Winchester. Of course, I knew how awesome he was ever since we had him on The Savvy Traveler but I must confess this is my first time reading an actual full-length book of his. I chose Korea because, well, duh - here I am. The book really inspired me to travel to the southwest coast of Korea, which we did this past weekend.

In Korea, Simon walks through the land of miracles to retrace the path of some 1600s Dutch sailors who were shipwrecked at the southernmost Korean island, taken to the main peninsula on a boat, and marched up to the capital in Seoul where the reigning king informed them they wouldn't be leaving. After eight or so years, they escaped and sailed to Japan. Then, one of them, Hendrik Hamel. wrote the first account of Korea for the so-called Western world.

Fascinating stuff! As is Simon's walk. I like his weaving of history, georgraphy, food, mountains, weather, wistfulness, and getting drunk with random people, even a monk (yes). I like how he lets some of the most egregious actions and characters (young-but-already-jaded U.S. service members who only leave base to go peruse flesh a few miles down the road, for example) speak for themselves. I like his encounter with the DMZ at the end and like even more that after the fact he actually went back to North Korea. I so envy English people like Simon and others who can actually go to North Korea. I am so sad to be an American who can't do it. (A much harsher "can't" than Cuba, I might add. Cuba actually wants us to visit -- we're the only jerks in that scenario. "We" - not me.)

I'll definitely be reading another Simon Winchester, the one wherein he cruises in China, because that's one of our upcoming travel plans, too! I recommend this book to anyone who is trying to learn more about Korea, or doesn't know anything beyond M*A*S*H and Kim Jong Il and kimchi. A lot of "travel narratives" are bad. This one is not.

This book has the uncanny effect of making it seem like a really, really good idea to take a journey across a country on foot.

Literary Blindness

now finished: Blindness by Jose Saramago

WARNING: Thar be spoilers here!!! They don't start until the third paragraph, though!

It was my first Saramago. Blindness has been on my to-read list for quite some time. Funny thing, I actually own a copy in storage back in the U.S., that I picked up off the $1 bargain rack at Borders, a Borders store that's probably closed now. It was a movie tie-in edition, and normally I wouldn't do it, but the $1 rack convinced me. Didn't get around to reading it in the U.S., and now, in Korea, I've found a book group of foreigners that were reading it, so I re-motivated myself - and, necessarily, re-purchased it - and away we go.

Good book. They don't just hand those Nobel prizes to anyone. Yet. It can be really refreshing after months of reading Water for Elephants, frothy memoir, and some-written-better-than-others-prez bios to plunge into an actual, good, true literary novel. It can also make a girl want to abandon all aforementioned contemporary bestsellers, work-required memoirs, and non-fiction projects to read only true, good, literary novels for a while. But I do love my projects, so I'm not abandoning them yet.

Anyway, Blindness. REMINDER: The spoilers start here!!! One thing we discussed at the book group is that some advocacy groups for the blind and perhaps for others with disabilities apparently protested this book for its "depiction of blind people." I find myself in shock that someone could so have entirely missed the point of something. There are about twenty-seven ways in which registering such a protest misses the point. First and foremost, the book is an allegory, and one with many layers of meaning at that. So, the people who are initially locked up, the first few hundred or so to go blind, degenerate into a pathetic, violent state. This is so clearly not a commentary on people who are blind, because it imagines an impossibility, a world different from our own, a society transformed almost overnight. It's asking questions about how we function, what a society that has come to rely on certain things would do if those things were taken away, and what those who have power do with it. I'm like, actually offended by people who miss these points. Someone at the book group pointed out that not everyone uses their intellect, and an advocacy group is speaking on behalf of people who will be thought of poorly by those who don't actually think about things. Ugh.

More spoilers! The other thing we talked about at book group that blew me away was the ending. I mean, the very end, the last sentence of the book, so this paragraph really, truly is a spoiler and I'm begging you not to read it if you don't want the book spoiled. I made an offhand comment at book group when we were discussing the doctor's wife about how everyone would treat her now that she is blind. Someone stopped me and said, "Did you say 'now that she is blind'? She didn't go blind." Shocked, I realized that the majority of the readers agreed with him, and that I had read it differently. The organizer of the book group said a friend of his (who was unable to make it that day) had the same reading of the ending that I did, and he had reacted to her like, "Did we read the same book?" I am marveling that I could read the last sentence so differently, but I totally took it as her turn to be blind. I thought she "lowered" her eyes by closing them, so that the city would still be there in her mind. It makes me want to read the Portuguese and see if that interpretation would make sense in the original language.

There are no more spoilers after this sentence! I highly recommend this book. It has come to my attention that some people have an issue with Saramago's style, and the voice that meanders through long flowing sentences that don't break up dialogue with punctuation nor indicate who is speaking in the traditional "he said" manner. Sigh. I just sigh at people who complain about things like that without actually asking themselves, "Am I reading good writing or bad writing?" While there is subjective enjoyment of all types of entertainment (good or bad), there is - oh, yes, there is - such a thing as good writing. There are good writers and terrible writers. I have sat across from both in writing groups over the years. Guess what? Jose Saramago was a good writer. And I definitely want to read more of his stuff.

I finished this almost a month ago. Man, I am a blog slacker these days.

Strangely Stirred

now finished: A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s by Stephanie Coontz

This book is a look at Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, which is of course the classic 1963 text that kick started feminism in a lot of women's (and men's) minds. I thought A Strange Stirring was quite interesting, and my review of it is on About:

Book Review of 'A Strange Stirring' by Stephanie Coontz

Would "Sara Groan" be too mean?

now finished: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

I'm in between presidential biographies - after a very satisfying Millard Fillmore experience, awaiting a two-volume stint with Franklin Pierce - and the time came to read some contemporary novels that have been percolating on the to-read list in my head for a while. I plunged right into Water for Elephants, what with the movie coming out soon and all. And....sigh.

It's never a good sign when the only thing you find yourself telling other people about a book is that you'll read it really fast. (Are you listening, Twihards?) Wanting to know what happens does not mean it is a great book. Does wanting to see a photo of a car accident mean it is necessarily great art? No. Two totally different things going on there.

I don't want to chalk Water for Elephants up to being just another nothing-attracts-a-crowd-like-a-crowd bestseller, but it really isn't the Great American Novel. It has some good ideas, some fun scenes, some good writing, some totally out of place dialogue (more like out of time - sounding decidedly un-1930s), some characters that are flat as a pancake and, bringing it all together, an author who I daresay is getting just a bit too much credit for being an animal rights enthusiast when she apparently has no problem with animals being forced to live in cruel captivity and perform in the circus.

Part of me thinks I shouldn't judge Water for Elephants based on the Sara Gruen interviews I've read, in which she says that extreme animal rights activists are as bad as those abusing animals. The rest of me is puzzled that this woman who is so enamored of the circus and zoos is getting credit for writing an animal rights-themed book.

The main problem with the book has nothing to do with any of this. The main problem is that the two main characters, Jacob and Marlena, who fall in love, are flat flat flat flat flat. In the midst of a circus - a CIRCUS! - a place with the most interesting, crazy, robust, raunchy, drifter, mean, talented, bizarre, drunk, quirky group of characters you've ever seen, this author manages to make the object of our hero's affection have absolutely nothing interesting whatsoever about her. Quite a feat, that. There's also the slight problem that most of these interesting kooky circus freaks and whatnot are men, while the three women characters are the beautiful love interest, the nurse, and the sex worker. Wow, Sara Gruen. Just wow.

I ended up gladly giving it away at our inaugural Andong English teachers book swap and am just a little sad that I spent the money to buy it (and gave Ms Gruen another number to pad her bestseller statistics), and yet I'm not really sorry I read it. This is what makes me miss having ready access to an English library.

Whither the Integrity of Millard Fillmore?

now finished: Millard Fillmore: Biography of a President by Robert Rayback

All in all I am a fan of Millard. Also, this was a more-than-decent bio that got me even more interested in a.)Millard Fillmore b.)New York politics of the early to mid-19th century c.)Buffalo.

Seriously, Buffalo was where it was AT when that there Erie canal was getting built and opening up waterways and the town was becoming an important port city for shipping and trade. And Millard and his wife just kind of strolled in and became important fixtures of the Buffalo social scene.

Millard took a whole lot of flak from newspaper man and would be president-maker Thurlow Weed over the years. I do not know who today is comparable to Thurlow Weed. He's not even like a Bill O'Reilly - his influence seems even more pernicious. I mean, he really got people to do what he wanted and nominate whom he wanted and he was more like a kind of sinister Oprah.

But Millard, apparently, had integrity. Even in his fights with Thurlow, disagreements with Zachary Taylor, and resolve to keep the union from breaking up over the slavery issue, he always acted with integrity. Who doesn't love a little integrity in a president? I mean, not that we've had that a lot in our lifetimes, but who doesn't love the idea of it?

People joke about Millard, apparently, as being the most obscure president, but I have never thought of him that way. (My favorite obscure prez is Rutherford B. Hayes.) Reading a bio of Millard really shows one that he was an important figure and quite a success at many things in his life, not some random who strolled out of nowhere to the national scene.

Of course, another tragedy struck when his wife died right as he was leaving office. And then his daughter died a year or two (I forget) later. I'm getting so overwhelmed by all these presidential tragedies. Presidents dying in office, presidents dying right when they leave office to settle into retirement, presidents' spouses dying...so much sadness!

Three cheers for Millard.

Where's Millard When You Need Him?

now reading: Millard Fillmore: Biography of a President by Robert Rayback

So I'm reading this Millard Fillmore biography, and I'm really into him. He is pretty underrated and I daresay misunderstood. It's really problematic to try to make 20/20 hindsight judgments about any of those guys from the early 1800s, because there is such a temptation to say, "If you weren't trying to end slavery, you were nothing." Obviously, those who were working to end slavery were wise, courageous, sensible and a whole host of other morally right qualities, but the problem comes in defining trying to end. We like to look back from our comfortable vantage point and get all "if-you're-not-with-us-you're-against-us" when there was really quite a lot going on.

Millard Fillmore stated unequivocally that he was against slavery and thought it was reprehensible. As a New York state representative, and later as vice-president and president, he had a problem in that he couldn't figure out a Constitutional way to end it. Basically, my point is that it was really difficult for a lot of politicians during the early 1800s, and we should walk a mile or so in their shoes, or at least read some books about them.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Before he even got to his presidency he was already an accomplished, well-liked, talented man who got lots of stuff done. Details, numbers, land/bankruptcy/debt law, state comptroller duties, political party unification and other fun tasks were right up his alley. He also read and had fun. And, he was sensible enough to realize religion was unnecessary in a lot of places the evangelical extremists want it shoved into public life. He was also pretty darn magnificent at effecting compromise. Not just the great compromise of 1850, but other compromises that kept parties from splinterting, brought people eye to eye, built alliances, and more. He did not act in vengeance and he rose above some petty crap hurled at him by the likes of Thurlow Weed and his New York political ilk.

In short, we could definitely use a little Millard right now in our own federal government shutdown nonsense.

Make No Mystique

now finished: The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
now reading: Millard Fillmore: Biography of a President by Robert Rayback
(curiously spelled "Raybach" in many places, but I'm going with what's on the book itself)

I was thinking about changing the name of this blog to "Things You Should Be Reading Instead of Give Me a !@#$&* Break Heaven Is for Real." What do you think? Does that have a nice ring to it?

OK, OK, we'll stick with the Literary Supplement...

So, as I have mentioned previously, everyone should read The Feminine Mystique and those of us who have read it before should reread it. In March, I spent some time with Betty Friedan's feminist classic and remembered how essential it is. That's right, is.

If there's anything that's more annoying than when people say "I'm not a feminist, but..." it's when people say that 1960s/70s feminism was necessary but is now a)not b)over c)both. Actually, on second thought perhaps those are equally annoying. But I digress. Feminism is alive and relevant, and I am happy to report that so is The Feminine Mystique.

Like many people, I became vaguely aware of The Feminine Mystique as a teenager and finally actually checked it out of the library during college, a time when I was doing all sorts of interesting things like abandoning my religion wholesale, kissing girls, visiting Communist nations, and so forth. As it happens, reading The Feminine Mystique is not nearly as subversive as doing those other things. And yet it remains curiously necessary, because we have people posting reviews on Goodreads that say things like, "The women in this book are unhappy because they don't have the gospel and they don't homeschool their children." Um - wow.

I've already written about The Feminine Mystique here, as well as about Betty Friedan's survey that launched her Feminine Mystique project. I'm just going to reiterate today that when you delve back into it for a rereading you might be astonished at how dead on she was about so many ways the tale has been spun -- it's like a giant web of lies from magazines, suburbia, elementary schools, guidance counselors, business, advertising, universities, marriage, and pretty much every force in society, insidious or overt. They spin the lie that a woman's "role" - her divine role, in many cases - is to be a wife and mother. And they never, ever, ever, ever, ever spin the lie that a man's role, divine role or only role (or, a personal favorite, "most cherished role") is to be a husband and father.

Why? BECAUSE THEY ALL KNOW what should be so obvious to everyone: you can be a parent and a spouse and that's NOT YOUR ENTIRE IDENTITY. Your identity is you. Nearly fifty years later, we are still feeding the backlash b.s. in the media and in far too many women's (and little girls') lives. We are still arguing this crap notion of "having it all" and "motherhood versus career" which is the falsest dichotomy that just puts everyone right back into the thick of the problem. Hypocrisy abounds, Betty Friedan totally called it out, and woe unto us if we forget it.

Interesting chapter worth revisiting: I totally forgot that she has a chapter about autistic kids who identify as "things" instead of with normalized human connections. In that chapter, doctors who have researched these cases point out the serious danger in parenting so intensely that the child can't develop, which happens when the mother is not allowed to have her own identity in the first place and is instead shoved into marriage at, like, age 18 after years of being groomed to find a boy and not act too smart around him and never have any dreams of her own and all that nonsense. It was so interesting to read that in light of the whole increasing autism today and stuff.

It's funny that Betty and NOW (the National Organization for Women, and yes, you should know that) became the staid/liberal/establishment feminism as opposed to radical feminist theory that sought to take down patriarchal society, because Betty Friedan was a revolutionary. I love me some revolutionaries.

Doin' Japan and Doin' the Feminist Canon

now finished: Dave Barry Does Japan by (duh) Dave Barry
Reading Women: How the Great Books of Feminism Changed My Life by Stephanie Staal

Dave Barry rules. We recently went to Japan, my first time outside of Tokyo Narita Airport layovers. Besides the fact that Japan is awesome as a whole, Hiroshima is now one of my favorite cities in the world. We did a lot of wandering there and found many cool little things including an used English book shop with cafe (meaning, also a bar!) where I just had to buy a used book as part of my Japan experience. And lo and behold, they had Dave Barry Does Japan for 5000 yen.

Funny stuff! What I like most about it is how he weaves together a wry look at both Japan and the United States, pointing out that when either culture cries, "You're so strange and different!" it's because it takes two to tango, i.e., one couldn't be strange and different if the other weren't also strange and different coming from the opposite perspective. But he's also just really funny, like about Godzilla, Toyotas, onsen spas, Japanese rock music and more.

I disagree with him about only one major thing, which is that he seemed to think the Hiroshima remembrances of the atomic bombing on August 6 every year were somehow "forgetting" the seriousness of why the U.S. dropped the bomb. He was also offended that at the nighttime gathering in the peace memorial park there were kids running around along the river in an almost festive atmosphere. Well, kids are kids, and they will run around on pretty much any occasion; have you even been with toddlers at funerals? I sure have. And, I don't see how anyone could visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and not find the whole Hiroshima remembrance very somber indeed. Furthermore, I don't think there is any justification for dropping an atomic bomb. Even legally, in criminal law, there is a difference between excuse and justification.

All that said, the Hiroshima chapter is a short, serious bit in an otherwise very funny book full of awesome observations and storytelling. I can't imagine it not inspiring someone to go to Japan, but then again, I can't imagine people not wanting to travel there in the first place.

As for Reading Women: How the Great Books of Feminism Changed My Life, wherein Stephanie Staal revisits the feminist classics of her college women's studies class a decade later, now that she's married with a child and by all accounts an actual adult woman, check out my About Women's History review here.

Anna and the King of Siam

Now finished: Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon
Next up: Dave Barry Does Japan
(backdated to match when I finished the book - sorry it was posted late!)

Sensing a theme yet? I decided to read Anna and the King of Siam in January because I was headed back to Korea, where I taught English to children and the occasional teenager or adult in 2005-06. There's loads to say about returning to Korea - most of which I haven't got around to blogging yet over on my main blog, just give me time - but as I was packing I came across the old paperback of Anna on my shef and decided to toss it in the carry-on. Why not check out another expat-English-teacher-in-Asia, old school style? I never actually bought the book: it was one of a slew of old (50s/60s) paperbacks previously owned by my dad, aunts, and uncle that sat in my grandmother's house for decades until she died in 2007 and I inherited a bunch of the books.

Anna certainly had it harder than any of us random twenty- and thirtysomething teachers today! Never mind online ESL teacher forums or which English-language movie is playing at the theaters, she didn't even have a telephone when she set about educating the children of the king and the ladies of the palace. Of which there were many, because the king was a promiscuous jerk - more on that later. When Anna needed to seek the British consul's help she might have to go by boat on the little river running through Bangkok.

Needless to say, she was a more stalwart soul than us, because she had to be. Also needless to say, the book made me want to visit Thailand like, right now. My other main observation is that the king is a big jerk. I don't really remember the movie musical The King and I that well - Yul Brenner, some kids running around and other prostrating-themselves people, etc. Now that I've read this book I'm not sure I remember the movie at all. Was he this much of a jerk in the movie? I mean, we're talking dozens of concubines/wives AND he has people tortured/killed without much guilt, kind of Dubya-Cheney style.

It was a quick enough read. I don't know that it would suck everyone in, but it is interesting and for sure does one of my favorite things: it reminds 20th and 21st century people (especially young people) that their thoughts and experiences aren't some new modern thing older generations wouldn't relate to. Including galavanting about the world teaching English.

December recap

Yes, I did read books in December. I humbly apologize for not writing about them here sooner! Here's the December recap. (Although I'm writing this after the fact, I'm backdating the post for archival purposes.)

Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America and Found Unexpected Peace by William Lobdell
This is one of those non-fiction books that catches my eye from time to time and muscles its way into my already-too-large, ever-expanding queue of Books To Read, for no reason other than right time/right place. It was a super quick read, and a good story. The author was an LA Times Orange County reporter so I could relate to his So Cal journalisming. He tells a good story: his story, of how he grew kind of religious but kind of apathetic (like so many in the U.S.), then found religion for realsies at en evangelical retreat, then became a thoughtful and spiritual religion reporter, and then realized it was all hooey, to borrow my friend Amy's word for religion. I think the story is interesting for seekers, ponderers, and confirmed atheists. And I know it's interesting for at least some still-in-the-faith Christians, because I read a bunch of comments and reviews online by people who were "moved" by his tale and are now holding out hope for him and praying for his return to Jesus. Which, hello. I guess we've just been too conditioned to "wait for the sequel." If nothing else, though, his insights into the shenanigans surrounding the Catholic priest scandals confirm in his mind the damage organized religion does. Philosophically, the fretting is done and I think he is totally at peace, as we atheists tend to be.


The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy
I read this one for my women's fiction book group at the feminist bookstore down the road a piece in Chicago. I miss my book group! Well, anyway, like most of you I had never heard of it before, but it was apparently a bestseller in its day, which was in the 1950s. Twentysomething girl goes off to live the foreigner life in Paris instead of "settling down" and subsequently finds ALL SORTS of interpersonal drama, much of it her own making but a good bit of it just part of the swirling cloud of creative expats doing creative expatty things. Needless to say, I related to this book too. It wasn't AWESOME, but I would go so far as to call it delightful. I'd say it deserves to be resurrected by more book groups.

Zachary Taylor: Soldier, Planter, Statesman of the Old Southwest by K. Jack Bauer
So there's one thing Jack Bauer can't do: write a presidential biography. Ha ha. This book was the driest of the dry. Out of twelve presidential biographies I have read, this easily ranks twelfth. I feel bad being so negative about it, because I did learn some things (and after all, that is the point of my prez bios project), but my goodness was it dry. And not just academic-stilted dry, but honest-to-god holy-s*@!-this-is-boring dry. It really read more like a college report on a military battle. No, make that a high school report on a military battle; there was nowhere near as much focus as a thesis of a college-level paper would provide. It was a recitation of facts in Ol' Rough and Ready's various military endeavors for a few chapters. Then it got slightly more interesting in Mexico when Taylor was at odds with his commander-in-chief, then-President James K. Polk. I had already read Polk's side of the story in the bio of him, and I had some sympathy for Zachary even then, which is more than I can say for the author of the Taylor bio, who really seems to loathe his subject. The actual presidency part of this book was so meager at the end that I can barely recall any of it. I have no idea, really, why he wrote this book. Someone needs to give us a little better examination of Z.T.'s life.

On to 2011!

Amazon user CLS is my new hero

NOT reading: Decision Points "by" George W. Bush

While searching for something else on Amazon, I noticed that ex-monster-in-chief George W. Bush's new book Decision Points is the top seller or the top search or something on there. Yes, I know, it's pathetic, but that's not the point. I perused some of the comments on the book and I have a new favorite person in the world for the day. Catherine aka "CLS" on Amazon, I don't know who you are, but you totally rule. Why? Because the thread she started in the Decision Points forum is: "Why isn't the title Decider Points?"

Fabulous!

How Many Books Will I Read in 2010?

now reading: American Women Activists' Writings ed. by Kathryn Cullen DuPont

I'm disappointed with the number of books I have read this year. I had even toyed with the idea of making 2010 the year I read 100 books! Instead, I have been an all-over-the-place reader and not accomplished anywhere close to that. As far as I can see there are two main reasons for this.

One is that I have been reading books to review them for work or do a little work-related research and while I like them, I usually do two or three of those at once, while also having a leisure read going, and all three just get jumbled and slowed down. The other main reason is that Brian and I live in a studio apartment in Chicago right now (since February). I actually like the layout, as studios go, with the bathroom, closet, and kitchen all separate so it's kind of like a 2.5-room studio. But it is a studio, and I do like to read books in quiet, which means that I don't do as much reading as I would if we had a separate room where I would not hear the news/sports/music or whatever else is going on. Basically, I only read when Brian is either also reading or not here or when I take the extra physical-but-also-mental step of having to create quiet in order to read instead of just starting to read. This might not make sense, but trust me - we read (and write!!!!) more when we have "a room of one's own."

Anyway, I believe I have read only 34 books this year so far! They are:

1. Money: A Suicide Note by Martin Amis
2. Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation by John Carlin
3. Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
4. Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
5. The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy's Last Year by Jay Parini
6. Introducing Feminism by Cathia Jenainati
7. Dirty Diplomacy: The Rough and Tumble Adventures of a Scotch-Drinking, Skirt-Chasing, Dictator-Busting and Thoroughly Unrepentant Ambassador Stuck on the Frontline of the War Against Terror by Craig Murray
8. The Life of Andrew Jackson by Robert V. Remini
   
9. The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
10. Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds by Stephen Kinzer
11. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
12. After the Second Sex by Alice Schwarzer
13. En el tiempo de las Mariposas by Julia Alvarez
    
14. Martin Van Buren by Ted Widmer
15. Old Tippecanoe: William Henry Harrison and His Time by Freeman Cleaves
16. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
17. Video Night in Kathmandu: and Other Reports From the Not-So-Far East by Pico Iyer
18. Tidal Wave: How Women Changed America at Century's End by Sara M. Evans
19. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
20. Chicago: Lonely Planet City Guide by Karla Zimmerman
21. The Gastronomical Me by MFK Fisher
22. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
23. John Tyler: Champion of the Old South by Oliver P. Chitwood
24. Betty Friedan: Her Life by Judith Hennessee
25. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
26. Writing in an Age of Silence by Sara Paretsky
27. The Talbot Odyssey by Nelson DeMille
28. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
29. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde
30. Le Petit Nicolas by Jean-Jacques Sempe
31. I Will Fight No More Forever: Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce War by Merrill D. Beal
32. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
33. Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America by Walter Borneman
34. Women Who Run the Show: How a Brilliant and Creative New Generation of Women Stormed Hollywood by Mollie Gregory

And the question is, (how) do I now revise my goal? It would be an extremely difficult thing to read 65 more books in addition to the one I'll finish tonight or tomorrow between now and December 31st, unless they were all picture books or maybe the entire Magic Treehouse series or something. Should I revise down to fifty? Sixty? Forty? (Forty doesn't seem at all ambitious enough, but I might actually be really busy during December as it happens.) Unless someone gives me a much better idea, I think I am going to revise the goal down to fifty, and a few of them might be young adult books which happen to be on my list anyway, just to make things a tiny bit easier on myself.

This blog entry has been brought to you by Goodreads, which ably keeps track of my books in the order I read them. I love that web site.

50 Books You Should Shut Up Until You Have Read

So, recently on Facebook a friend tagged me in her post of that list that's been circulating for a couple years with the intro, "The BBC thinks most people have only read 6 of these 100 books; how many have you read?" This has led to an unprecedented number of comments about books, the list, and which books should be on the list. I had no idea so many people wanted to jabber about books with me! My little ol' Literary Supplement blog has been here the whole time! I should also point out that there is no evidence that particular list was actually the BBC's list anyway; rather, it is probably a random internet bastardization. Such is the way of the world. Anyway, I half-jokingly said I'd make my own list of fifty books and as luck would have it, the serious half has won out. Off the cuff, spontaneously, what the heck, this list is nothing close to complete or definitive, but is nonetheless....

Fifty Books I Think Everyone Should Read

1. Aesop's Fables
2. The Divine Comedy by Dante
   
3. Macbeth by Shakespeare
   
4. Candide by Voltaire
5. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
6. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
7. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
8. The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe (and a collection of his stories)
   
9. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
   
10. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
    
11. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
12. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
13. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
14. Cimarron by Edna Ferber
15. The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
    
16. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
17. The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Willem Van Loon
18. Jubilee by Margaret Walker
    
19. Lie Down in Darkness by William Styron
20. The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
21. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
    
22. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
23. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
24. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
    
25. The Lives of a Cell by Lewis Thomas
    
26. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
27. The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
    
28. Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
29. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
    
30. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
31. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
32. Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker
33. Julian by Gore Vidal
34. Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
35. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
36. The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey
37. The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
38. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
39. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
40. A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle
    
41. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
42. The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
43. Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
44. Holes by Louis Sachar
45. Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins
46. Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
    
47. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
48. Tepper Isn't Going Out by Calvin Trillin
49. Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
50. Going Nucular by Geoffrey Nunberg

There. Now, how many of those have you read?